Philophobia
by Raven's Favorite Emotion
Summary: Philophobia: The fear of falling, or being, in love.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans, if I did I would probably be able to afford more comics! **

_Philophobia_

_Prologue_

And then it happened, the thing that I had been telling myself wouldn't, the thing that I had spent the past few weeks repressing.

We were talking about something stupid, or at least that's how it felt to me, but it was keeping us both entertained at the moment and so I had no desire to change the subject. It didn't happen the way I had thought it would, like a ton of bricks was hitting me, or there was a tidal wave about to hit. The whole world didn't shatter, there was no atomic explosion. I had thought that at least _something _would happen to alert the world that I, Raven Roth, the cynic and hard ass, had fallen in love.

But to me it just felt like the hand that was holding mine had somehow gotten inside my chest and placed itself firmly around my heart. I even looked down at our hands to check and make sure that didn't literally just happen, but of course it hadn't.

That's how I knew. I had never felt anything like this before, and now that I did I understood the intensity of the human heart and how I might never want to let him go.

And it scared me worse than he would ever know.

**A/N: So I'm guessing that you noticed that I deleted Teen Mom. I decided that that story is just a writing experiment, something to sharpen my skills as a writer, and I wouldn't be that dedicated to it. That, and the fact that it's not a very orignal plot etc. etc. Anyway, this one will be much better. :) **

**Love,**

**RFE **


	2. Chapter One

**Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. If I did I would probably know what was going on in the comics a bit better, because as of right now I am freaking confused about the relationships of everybody. Feel free to explain if you can. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter One_

_**Philophobia: Noun: Fear of falling, or being, in love. **_

He was ridiculous. There was no other word to describe him. How else were you supposed to describe someone with green hair, an insufferable goofy grin, and an ego that could sometimes be bigger than Buckingham Palace?

"I swear to God, Gar, if you say one more thing to me about the meatloaf in the cafeteria I'm going to shank you," I snapped at him as I bit into sandwich that I had made at home. He was right, all of the cafeteria food was gross, but I was tired of hearing about it. "Why do you insist on having the hot lunch at all if you're just going to complain about how disgusting it is?"

"Because, Raven, I have to test these things out on myself before I let the public try them, just in case one of the ingredients is deadly."

"Yes, because half of the people in the cafeteria, who are eating the same thing you are by the way, would die if you didn't eat it first."

"That... is very true." I was pleased. There was nothing that he could say back at me, since he wasn't testing out the hot lunch, and some of the people in the cafeteria were eating it, and none of them were falling down dead. He was trumped, and he knew it.

The other people at our table were now talking about something else. They usually just ignored Gar and I when we were bickering about something, which was often, so sometimes Gar and I had to jump back into a conversation. Sometimes one of the others, Vic usually, would get sucked in the argument and then everyone got involved. But that didn't happen very often and that was a good thing.

"And then I told him to back off. And that was the end of it, that stupid Xavier Red," Dick was saying, with relish. Xavier Red was a bit of a jerk, yes, but it wasn't a big enough reason to hate him like Dick did. I think Kori, as well as some kind of competition had something to do with why Dick hated him so much, but I wasn't really sure.

"So then what happened?" Vic asked, and Dick started telling us Xavier's retort. Kori was paying very close attention to what Dick was saying, like she always does being the loyal girlfriend that she is, and Gar was now listening too. I have to admit that I was tuning him out; I didn't really care about Xavier Red anyway. So what if he was a jerk? Most people are, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

I continued chewing as I look around the cafeteria, people watching like I sometimes do. This was something that I usually did if I was ever forced to go to the mall (mostly with Kori, but sometimes if everyone went too) but sometimes at school it was just too.

There wasn't anyone that I really knew in Lunch C, which is when I have lunch, except for the people that I was sitting with, but there was a red haired football player that was shaking his butt like he was trying out for a Beyonce video while his friends were jeering at him.

"What are you laughing at?" Gar asked me, trying to follow my gaze. "Oh," he said when he finally saw what I was looking at and he chuckled. "That is just too funny," he added. "Who knew Bryce Nolan could move like that?"

"Yeah," I paused. "And I wasn't laughing."

"No, but you were smiling at him. For you that's as good as a laugh. I mean, you almost never laugh. Especially not at my jokes."

"I don't laugh at your jokes because they just aren't funny."

"Sure they aren't. You know you secretly think I'm hilarious."

"The day I find you even remotely funny is the day that I kiss you."

"Well, you're just dying to kiss me, aren't you?"

I rolled my eyes, "Oh yes, kiss me now! I've been waiting for you all my life," I said dryly, getting up from the table to get to Sex Ed, which happens to be one of the two classes that I share with Gar (if you count study hall a class), and is also a class that I share with Vic and Kori.

"I knew it!" he exclaims, and bumps his shoulder into mine. I stop. "What are you doing?" he asks, looking at me. "You're blocking the hallway."

I sighed; I couldn't believe that we were going to have this conversation again. "Okay, Gar, we've gone over this. I have a bubble around me. What's that bubble called? It's called my personal space. You don't get in it unless I touch you first, or if I want you to. Understand?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," is all he says as he holds the door open for me.

"Thanks," I tell him as I glide past.

"You're welcome," he says back, as he does every time he opens a door for me, which is often. He always holds doors open for me, which I think is a bit strange, but also nice in its own way. It shows that at least chivalry isn't totally dead, as my mother often says.

*****

"Hey, Raven," I hear someone call as I open my car in front of my door.

I look up. "Oh, hey Garth," I call, dragging my backpack out of my car.

Garth was actually someone that I was on pretty good terms with outside of my five friends at school. In fact, my friends were friends with _his _friends, if that even makes sense.

You see, we both go to different schools even though he lives in my apartment complex which probably means that he would go to the same school as me. His mother, though, teaches over in Steel City (which happen to be Jump City's fiercest rivals in all things containing high school sports) so he goes to school over there.

Our 'groups' met at a track meet freshmen year (As if I was actually running. High school athletics? No thank you. That was Gar, Vic, and Kori's department.), and we all actually got along pretty well and kept up with them. Occasionally we all go and hang out, which have resulted in some pretty crazy times.

When I moved in Garth and I actually found that we had something in common other than our friends, and sometimes talk if the mood strikes us. I had a mad crush on him when we first met (something that Gar refuses to let go of), but now we are more friends than anything else. Although I still he think he is extremely hot, but that's a moot point.

"Nothing really, unless you count having a research paper due in Government _and _English as something."

Garth winced. "Ouch. That sucks; we don't really have our big ones due until the end of the year."

"You lucky dog."

We sit in silence for a while until Garth begins the conversation again. "So, how's Gar? Is he ready for the big race this year?"

I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. Ever since the two of them met they have had this gigantic testosterone fueled completion, which as far as I'm aware, has no loser or winner.

In fact, I'm pretty sure Garth just does all of this to humor Gar, because Gar really is the one who started this whole thing in the first place. They're friends now, sure, but Gar always strives to beat Garth in swimming, something which they're both pretty good at… even though Garth is a better swimmer just by natural talent, if I was being honest.

"I'm sure he is you know how he gets about that whole thing."

"Talk to you later Rachel, I've got to go. I've got swimming practice at four thirty," Garth tells me, waving as he walks away.

Gar would have a cow if he knew that I was just talking to Garth. I smile at the thought of what he would say to me if he knew. When he's not trying to be, he's actually pretty darn hilarious.

"Raven!" my mother shouts when I enter the doorway. "Come, you have to see my latest painting. I'm thinking of calling it 'Serendipity'!" Like an eager child my mother grabs my hand and pulls me toward her painting room (which used to be her bedroom until she announced that she must have an artistic space). Once inside I cringe at the joyful opera music coming from the loud speakers. She really must have wanted to get into the mood.

"Wa la!" my mother exclaims, beaming at me excitedly. She only gets like this when it comes to her work (which is painting), and occasionally men. She likes to show people her work while she is still working on it, unlike most artists, or so I have heard.

My mother was an alcoholic, starting when I was ten up until I was fourteen years old. Evidently she got pregnant with me at a young age. She soon got kicked out of the house, and had to find a job, a place to live, and to top it all off she was pregnant.

So my mother did all of these things, had me when she was barely nineteen, and somehow managed to keep it all together until I was ten, which was when things just started to fall apart for her. She soon got into heavy drinking and left me totally alone when she went out at night to drink, and often came home drunk or with a hangover.

She had always been painting, though her painting instruments were fairly more expensive now, and she only painted with watercolors and construction paper when we were at our worst. When she was looking for a job (she lost many when she was still a lush) my mother was getting up to leave when one of her paintings had fallen out of her jacket and onto the man's desk.

The man knew brilliance when he saw it (or so my mother claimed) and offered her five hundred dollars for a stupid watercolor on paper. He set her up with an agent and helped my mother get started. Because of this, this money and promises of fame, did she go and get help for her problem.

To be honest I'm bitter about how well things worked out for her in the end. I know things were tough before, because I was there. I remember how things used to be when I was small, and even though we didn't have the best of anything we were still doing okay, scratching by. People have hard lives all the time and do not get drunk and abandon their daughters.

I had to sit and watch her get drunk, and listen to her while she would ramble on like an insane person. Sometimes she would hit me, or tell me how all of this was my fault and that I was a mistake. Of course she now says that these words weren't true, but they felt like it at the time and still feel like it today.

My mother has made lots of mistakes in her life (for example most of the men she has dated and married to), but one thing that isn't a mistake is her talent.

"Well?" she asks, not noticing me being lost in thought.

The first thing that I notice about the painting is that there is a lot of yellow. Different shades of yellow all over the place slashed with random red marks. Serendipity indeed.

"I like it," I tell her, because I do. Although I'm not fond of her 'happy' pieces (she will be in too good of a mood for me to deal with until she is done) I did like this one, and the vibrancy of the color is just brilliant.

"Thanks," she beams at me again. "Oh, and by the way, Kevin is coming over tonight for dinner."

I groaned internally. Her boyfriend Kevin is her flavor of the year, and although no marriage plans have been made yet I wouldn't be surprised if that happens.

My mother has been married three times, and all of her marriages ended in failure.

My mother is _always _in a relationship, and the one time that I have ever seen her not have a significant other was when she was drinking at her heaviest, which was when I was about twelve.

Once in a relationship she becomes almost dependent on them, gets over excited about them whenever she can, and becomes a mess for weeks when they break up. She has had many boyfriends, and since I'm not a problem child (meaning I am rarely at home) most of the men don't care that she has a daughter.

I have listened to her cry on the phone, listened to her moan and wail to me, and I have seen her extremely happy and loved.

I refuse to ever be like her. I do not want to hop from one relationship to another, become dependent on someone, and I don't want to _fall _in love.

I've seen what that does to people and I refuse to have any part in that sort of thing. No thank you.

From what I can gather love can turn you insane (my mother), hurt (myself and Gar), or in rare instances turn out fantastically great (Kori and Dick).

I only voice these opinions to myself, though, because I know that they would alarm other people. But when you have to listen to your mother whisper on the phone to some man, "I don't think that I can do this without you. Please, come back to me," it makes my mind up pretty fast. I refuse to become reliant on one person for all my happiness, the way my mother is or can be.

I, Raven Roth, promise to never fall in love.

Of course I had no idea what was to come.

**A/N:You know, they say promises are made to be broken. :) Anyway, yes, I know a quick update! Don't get used to this. I'm not real pleased with this chapter, but I think it set a good foundation. It explains a lot, anyway, like why Raven is so bitter towards her mother, as well as love, plus we get some Gar/Raven at the top. :D **


	3. Chapter Two

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Two_

Really, this couldn't be real. "You're kidding me, right?" I asked.

"Nope, we signed you up, Raven, and there is nothing that you can do about it now."

"Sometimes you two are really close to being hated by me. Do you guys even realize that?"

"But Raven, how could you possibly hate us? We are two of your best friends," Gar replied, pretending that he was innocent. As if.

"I am not doing it. You're out of your mind," I replied. There was no way in _hell _that I was going to do the mall talent show with these two goons. "Vic, you're normally the voice of reason. Why didn't you do something about this?"

"Because the winner gets three thousand bucks, and if we split it three ways we each get a thousand. That, and I think we could probably win," Vic shrugged, acting as if he didn't care that we were probably going to have to do something together. "Besides," Vic added, "it was the only way that I could talk Gar out of doing his stand up comedy act. Do you really want him top embarrass himself up there like that?"

I rolled my eyes while Gar replied indigently, "Hey!"

"No, I guess not... I'll do it, if I have to. And we'll divide this evenly if we win, right?" I asked, just wanting to make sure.

"Yep, I knew you would Raven!" Gar grinned, obviously pleased with himself.

"Well, don't get too happy, I could always just pretend to be doing this and end up not doing it."

"You wouldn't do that to me, Raven. I know you."

"Hello class," Mrs. Baros announced, a thick pile of papers in her class. "Since everyone has turned in their papers on Southern writers, I have new project for you." Cue the groans.

Mrs. Baros projects weren't _that _bad, at least I didn't think they were, but maybe I'm just a bit biased. Gar always did tell me that I am a bit of an English nerd, but I can't help the fact that I like to read.

I was in Honors English, so I expected everything to be hard, so all of the groans weren't really necessary in my opinion. "This, however, is not going to be due anytime soon. In fact, I don't want to see any part of this until March," her saying this seemed to calm down some of the groaners. We had _months _before this was due.

"I will give you a topic, and you will have to interview people on what they think the topic is. You will have to put their statements on whatever you think it is, and weave them together to create a essay on the subject. It can be half a page, to five pages long. And, I will remember," at the thought Mrs. Baros smiled.

She began passing the papers in her hands on our desk facing down. Some people looked at theirs and laughed, others groaned, and some just shook their heads. They couldn't have been _that _bad, could they?

When she set the paper down on my desk I turned it over as fast as I could. _Romantic Love, _it read.

Oh Lord, here's something that I almost know _nothing _about. I can tell you what platonic love is like, I have plenty of that for my friends. They became my family when my mother was off being an alcoholic, and they kept my secrets and let me be friends with them, even though those weren't my best days.

But of course I get _Romantic Love _instead. Lovely.

I've never felt it, and I just don't _believe _in it almost. I've seen my mother when she thinks she's in love, but all of the divorces and boyfriends... plus my own heartbreak (if that's what you want to call it).... I'm sorry, but that just doesn't add up.

_It's not real, _I write, and fold up the paper and put it in my backpack.

At one time I was in love, or at least I had thought I was before I realized that it was all just a big lie. His name was Malchior and he was the sweetest most caring guy in the world and he just _got _me.

Or so I thought.

It turned out that he was actually dating six girls at the same time. It's amazing how well some people can lie, really.

"Raven!"

I turned around. "Yeah Kori?"

"You promised to come to the mall of shopping with me, remember? You said you would help me pick out Dick's anniversary gift with me!"

"Yes Kori, I remembered," I sighed. I actually had forgotten, but I wasn't about to tell her that.

"Then let's go," I climbed into Kori's passenger seat and winced when she turned on the radio and someone began shrieking, "_Baby_!" How can she even listen to that junk? Jesus.

Kori hummed the whole way to the mall, being her usually cheery self. She and Dick had been dating for a year now (which was the whole point of her begging me to help her pick out a gift, as if I can really) even though the two of them really had 'something' before when they were 'just friends'.

When they finally got together Vic, Gar, and I were just _relieved. _I mean, yes, Dick is a very good friend of mine but he can just be so... obtuse about the really important stuff. And a really big jerk sometimes.

The two of them just tip toed around each their own feelings making some very big blunders (mostly on Dick's part) before the got together with the three of us shouting "It's about freaking time!" at the top of our lungs. Not an exaggeration either.

"Do you think he would like this?" Kori held up a bright orange t-shirt with an outrageous flower print that looked more like something that Gar would wear as a joke than Dick would ever wear seriously. Of course, simply because it was from Kori he'd wear it with a smile but I just couldn't picture him in it.

"Why don't you just get him like a cap or something. Hmm... no, he wouldn't want to mess up his hair. I don't know Kori! Why'd you even take me, you know I'm no good at this stuff."

"Because I just wanted to spend some time with you again. We don't really do the hanging out anymore just you and I, and it was fun when we did. I mean now you spend almost all of your time with Gar-"

I cut her off before she could say anything else. "I do not!"

"Yes you do, when Dick and I started dating you and Vic and Gar got almost closer than the five of us ever did before, but now you two hang out even more with each other than you do with Vic."

"Vic is with us all the time!" I protested.

Kori looked at me dubiously. "But last weekend you and Gar went to the movies together alone-"

"That was because Vic had a car convention to go to and you and Dick were going on a date anyway and we really wanted to go!"

"and before that you two had plans that you didn't tell the rest of us about-"

"Okay, that was because I was helping him get Rita a birthday gift and we didn't need the rest of you guys to come because it wasn't that big of a deal."

"and now you two are doing a skit in the mall of shopping's talent show together, which is something just the two of you are doing together," she finished.

"Vic is doing that with us!"

"Yes, but he's just helping with the equipment and props, or at least that's what he told Dick and I anyway."

"Kori, look I know you're only trying to help, but can we just get off the topic please?" I didn't really want to admit it, but the subject was making me uncomfortable.

"Fine, I will drop it," she sighed dejectedly.

I looked around the store trying to find something, anything. I picked up an object at random. It was a white mask with the eyes hidden and black around the edges. "Think he'd like it?"

Kori smiled. "It's glorious."

**A/N: Argh! I don't know what's wrong with me. Ordinarily writing chapters isn't this hard, but for some reason this story is making it extremely difficult. Maybe it's because Raven has to go through a journey to stop making her so damn closed minded and defensive! But since I know where this story is headed and the outline is written I **_**will **_**finish this, scout's honor! **

**Love,**

**RFE**


	4. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans. If I did... well... I'm not really sure what I'd do because I'd be so stinking rich I could do almost anything that I wanted to. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Three_

"Do you want me to take you to school?" my mother came up from behind me and asked, her keys in her hand.

"What?" I asked. "No, I can drive myself. I have my own car."

"I know, but..." Arella bit her lip and looked down at the ground. "I was hoping that I could spend some time with you, as in out of the house after school."

"Why?" The word came out sharper than I had intended it to. I didn't exactly mean to ask that in the tone that I did. Oops. She was not going to be happy.

"Because I am your mother and I think it would be nice if we could go to the mall after school or go eat dinner or something for some quality time."

"But it's Friday. My friends and I always have Movie Night on Friday's."

"Oh," my mother's eyebrows meshed together. "Why don't they ever come here for 'Movie Night' then? I mean, we have a good selection of movies and our TV isn't small or anything."

I sighed, there really was too much to explain when it came to the fact that my friends didn't come to my house for reasons that none of them questions. Really, the real reason that they don't come is because when we started Movie Night (which was around the time that we all started high school) she was still a drunk and I didn't want to have to explain to my friends what was going on. Only Gar and Vic knew that my mother was once an alcoholic, and I was planning on keeping it that way at the time.

It was not as though I could explain this to my mother, though.

"Because we like to go to Wayne Manor and watch movies over there because Dick has a home theater," I lied. In truth we have a cycle. First it's Kori's house, then Gar's, then Dick's, and then Vic's. Skipping my house has always just been a part of the process, and that wasn't about to change any time soon. It was Kori's turn to host this week.

"That makes sense. Well... when does Movie Night start?"

"Around eight." Of course my mother wouldn't know that. On most Friday nights she was either on a date or too engrossed in a painting to even think about coming to the outside world let alone pay attention to me and whether or not I was actually at home or not.

"Well why don't I take you to school, we can take a sweep of the mall, check out some sales and then then I could drop you off." For some reason I was having flashbacks of the second grade. But I also knew that there was no getting out of this. When my mother had an idea she was like a dog with a piece of meat; she wasn't ever letting go. It was probably one of the reasons that she was such a great artist, because she didn't let go of inspiration but instead she took it and ran.

"That sounds fine," I answered. Why, oh why, was there defeat in my voice?

*****

Needless to say the suspense of spending some 'quality time' with my mother made me not be in the best of moods. I took some of my anger and channeled it on some harmless freshmen just because I could and knew that what I was doing was undirected. I just needed to calm down.

"Whoa, what happened to you?" Gar came up from behind me and asked. "You're never that vicious to freshmen. Or to anyone really."

"I am fine, just don't ask."

Of course, because it was Gar, he did ask and we ended up getting into a huge fight over it. It felt good to let that pent up rage out (even if it was only part of it) but I knew that I was channeling it to the wrong person.

When we were done and I had successfully made Gar walk away angry a small girl was standing off to the side, staring. "What are you looking at?" I barked harshly at her. She flushed and walked away quickly, staring at the other side of the hallway.

_Calm down, calm down_ I pleaded with myself. Too much anger was a bad thing for me, as I have learned. I slipped into the nearest bathroom and sat on an obliging toilet, rubbing my fingers over my temples in circles breathing in and out slowly.

Eventually my heart beat slowed and evened out and I had managed to pack apart my rage. Gar probably wouldn't want to talk to me right now, and I wouldn't blame him if he ignored me for the rest of the day. It had been a very long time since I had taken out my fury on him, and he was probably having post traumatic flashbacks.

I put my face in my hands. My mother always could bring out the worst in me.

*****

When my mother picked me up she was smiling. "Hi honey, how was your day at school?" Definitely second grade flashbacks. What was the punchline here?

"It was okay, I guess." In reality I had to skip fourth period (which was Study Hall, one of the classes that I had with Gar) to calm myself down and after that I had an okay rest of the day. I decided to skip lunch and fifth period too, to avoid Gar and everyone else and had just sat outside underneath a tree and read.

None of the others bothered me, though I wasn't sure if that meant that Gar told them about our fight or if because he didn't.

"How was yours?" I forced myself to ask.

"It was good, I finished my painting."

"'Serendipity'?"

"Yes, that one. I've got an idea for another one but I need some time to figure it out."

"Like?"

"Well, I'm not sure how the color scheme should work, like what colors could go with what. I'm thinking about going on another artist's retreat. If that's okay with you, of course." My mother looked at me. She had never before looked at me for my opinion on wheter or not she wanted to go on one of her artist's retreats before. This whole thing was starting to make me really suspicious.

"That's fine."

"Yes, well, I'm planning to go on another artist's retreat pretty soon, and then I think I will have finished planning it out and I'll have to wing it from there."

"Ah." It was silent in the car for a while. I could tell that my mother was desperately trying to grab at topics for conversation. My one or two word answers unnerved her. I don't know what she thought today was going to be like, but it wasn't going along with her plan.

"So, what about you? What's going on in your world? You still dating that boy, um, Mal er Mal-"

I cut her off before she could even begin. Lord knows what she would end up calling him. "We broke up over a year ago."

"Oh."

"Why aren't you with Kevin tonight?"

"I thought it would be more fun to spend some girl time with you than to be with him tonight." I couldn't figure my mother's motives out. Never before had she tried to spend some 'girl time' with me, and now it was all she wanted to do on a Friday night?

The rest of the shopping trip, or 'girl time' went about just as well as I had imagined. My mother had eventually stopped trying to continue the awkward conversation she had attempted to the car. We spent about an hour in two stores that had a sale (or at least that's what it said on a sign, I wasn't really trying to pay attention.

When I told her that it was time to go she had looked about as thankful at the passing time as I was.

I could tell that my mother was relieved when she dropped me off at Kori's without even asking why we weren't going to Wayne Manor instead. She sped off and I found myself waving at her and wondering what the deal was all of a sudden.

When I walked in everyone was already getting ready, Dick was in the kitchen putting the popcorn into a bowl and I could hear Vic and Gar bantering about something that I guess had happened while I wasn't around. Kori was humming and looking through her movie selection. Everything was as it should be, even though I wasn't there.

When Kori heard her sliding door open she stopped humming and looked up. "Oh... Raven." She paused for a moment. "We were not sure if you were coming or not." Kori cleared her throat. "But you can still watch of course. I was think about us watching this." She holds up a familiar movie cover. _When Harry Met Sally_, I read. I used to watch this movie all of the time when my mother had left the house going off to Lord only knows where. I loved it, and at one time had known almost all of the lines by heart. Not that anyone else knew this, of course.

The boys probably wouldn't be too fond of it (except for some of the funnier parts) but the host of that week's Movie Night got to pick the movie. Dick and Vic usually picked action and spy movies, even though Dick had some of the older ones and Vic had the newer ones. When we came to Gar's it was usually something either really scary or geekishly sci-fi. And when at Kori's either we watched a documentary (for some reason Kori found these fascinating) or a sappy romance. At least this was a good one tonight.

"That sounds great Kori. I've always liked that movie." Now the boys had come up silently and began listening when I wasn't paying attention. "Hey guys," I wave at them, a bit sheepishly because it was pretty stupid of me to avoid them all day and the show up for Movie Night.

But I just _had _to find a way to get away from my mother as soon as I could.

And, if I was being honest with myself I just really wanted to see all of my friends. They could always make me feel good even when I was at my lowest.

"Hey," Vic was the one who finally awnsered. "Kori, have you picked the movie yet?"

"Yes, and it will be glorious! Even Raven likes it." Kori held up the cover again.

"_When Harry Met Sally_? Really? I think I'd almost rather watch about how hot dogs were made again."

Dick turned a visible shade of light green. "I wouldn't. I used to acutally eat hot dogs, and I enjoyed them. Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"

We all went into Kori's living room, where there were pictures of her and her siblings everywhere. It was almost like a photo gallery of what was instead of what was now. Kori's brother is dead now, and she hasn't seen her sister in years. And yet her uncle still insists on keeping their pictures around just in case.

Vic took the reclining chair that he always took whenever we had Movie Night over at Kori's house. Kori and Dick shared the love seat (of course) and that left the couch for Gar and I. Lovely.

I sat down tentitively next to him, unsure wheter or not he was still mad at me. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he was, because I had said some pretty harsh things that I shouldn't have.

Gar didn't even try to say anything, he just looked straight ahead and watched the previews. So he wasn't going to be the one to apologize.

I hate apologizing.

I took a deep breath to calm myself and then said, "Look, those things I said... I'm sorry. They weren't true and I was just saying that because I was... kind of upset."

"Yeah, I got that part acutally."

See, this is why I hate apologizing.

"So..." I paused.

"But you can't just do that, you can't take it out on me just because you're upset. That's not cool."

"I know, but... I'm sorry. It's easy to fall back into familar habits, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I get what you mean but you really should _tell _people what's wrong instead of getting all defensive and in their faces when they just want to help."

"So, you forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive," Gar smiled at me. I could feel the grin on my face growing as well.

"Thanks, Gar. You're the best." I was about to say something else but Vic interrupted us.

"Will you two shut up, the movie's about to start."

I rolled my eyes. Some things just never change.

**A/N: Oh Arella, you have much to learn. If you're wondering what Raven's deal with her mother I'll explain in detail later. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! **


	5. Chapter Four

**Disclaimer: If I owned Teen Titans that movie that was rumored to be coming out in 2011 would have made it past the writing stage already, meaning it would probably actually happen! Imagine!**

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Four_

When I was eight years old my mother and I lived on the edge of one of the major highways in town in a small green house. The house was really nothing special, but it was the only house that I've ever lived in and it was the last place that I ever had a real part of my short childhood.

The green house was small and it probably would have been better to call the 'kitchen' a kitchenette because of how small it was. It had all of one bedroom, in which my mother and I shared a large Queen sized bed that was on the floor, unless she had one of her boyfriends came over and then I was banished to the couch.

It was dark and dreary and smelled deeply of smoke from the previous owners and the smell was stubbornly set into the carpet, but my mother set all sorts of air fresheners in 'special' places all over the house so sometimes when you walked past a certain section of a room you would randomly smell the scent of orange or vanilla or even brown sugar.

Needless to say I remember it well.

Across the highway was a large blue house that an older couple, the Garcia's, lived in. They were always kind to me, and Mrs. Garcia always offered me something to eat or drink and a story or two about her past back in the Carribean when they saw me lingering around their yard because no other children lived on the highway because of the supposed danger, even though I lived through it even though I ran through the street more than once.

But then one day Mrs. Garcia died, and of what I never learned. I just knew that one day she was offering me some of the limeade she had just made and the next my mother told me that she had died in the hospital and that she knew because she had asked her husband had called her to tell us that she had passed away.

Mr. Garcia seemed listless when he worked in their yard in the weeks following her death. At one time his flower garden had been full of tropical flowers that had been a part of their home back Cuba. Eventually the flowers withered away, and there was nothing but a bunch of dead stems.

Mr. Garcia had sent me some seeds in the mail because his wife had often noted my fascination with the foreign flowers, the hibiscus especially, but he had no desire to walk over to them and give me the packages himself.

One day I came home after school to see several construction vehicles in his front yard. Childishly I had thought that he was just getting some of the woody stems out of his yard and was going to have them replaced with a kind of tree or something, but I wasn't sure why he would need an excavator for that exactly.

But no, instead they were planning on moving the whole house.

You see, Mr. Garcia wanted to move... he actually needed to move because living next to a highway was dangerous for a man of his age. But he couldn't just leave his house. He had far too many memories and feelings invested in it, and it was the last place that his beloved wife had ever been alive. He was going to have the whole house taken with him instead of leaving it for some new couple to have as their own.

I watched with fascination as the construction crews worked on what seemed like an impossible task. At the age of eight I had moved at least for times, but I couldn't imagine what it would be like to take a house with you instead of just your things. It would have made things a lot easier to move that way, and I wouldn't have had to leave any of my things behind.

Then I came home from school, planning on watching them continue to dig the house out of the ground, but the house was gone! The whole foundation was gone as well, leaving a large house sized hole in the middle of Mr. Garcia's yard! I rushed over and climbed into the hole, not a very deep one but still a hole, and let my fingers feel the dirt there. I was astonished, I couldn't believe that they had actually done it (they had actually moved an entire house!), but they had.

When my mother came home from work I was frantic. I was crying and I demanded that she take me to go look for Mr. Garcia's house. She did, and even though it took us until eleven o' clock that night we found out that he now lived at least ten large blocks from us. They had managed, somehow, to get the whole house on wheels and a large truck pulled it from it's old domain to it's new previously empty lot.

When I was older I had begun thinking about that. What would it be like to suddenly have your whole foundation, something solid and sure, suddenly not crack but actually and physically move? What would happen if what we knew to be the foundation of _you_, yourself, to be something else completely and to change direction realizing that you never even knew where it was, or if it was as solid as you thought, to begin with?

*****

I had found a skit that the three of us could do together, one where Vic actually had to _act _and not just "mess with props and stuff" so that no one could get the wrong idea about Gar and I like Kori had gotten.

It was more like a short play than a skit, but the entire thing was only about seven minutes (at least that's how long the video on YouTube was) and there was no need for in depth characterizations so I figured that even someone with my average acting ability would be able to pull it off.

The skit revolved around Gar and I, an old married couple sitting in rocking chairs on their front porch arguing about the people that passed by. To make it funny, however, the same person has to walk in front of the couple each time dressed as someone else. This made it necessary for Vic to preform the 'quick change' but he declared that it wasn't too difficult, especially when he had to wear a dress and play a woman (he wasn't too pleased with that if you could imagine, but I told him I would only do the talent show if we did this piece), so everything was settled.

We practiced together almost everyday after Vic's football practice and got pretty good at it, or so I had thought. Gar had all of his lines down pact and I didn't mess up too horribly on my character. In fact, it was kind of easy for Gar and I to play an old married couple. It came naturally, somehow.

Vic eventually masterd the quick change and we were ready for the talent show, which was going to be Saturday night. We were going to "rock everyone's world" as Gar put it, and even I thought so.

In fact I was kind of getting excited about the whole thing, and not just the fact that I was sure that the three of us were going to win the three thousand dollars even though that was part of it. This whole thing was becoming kind of fun. I am not, and never ever will be, the type of person who enjoys getting up on stage in front of a lot of people for my own enjoyment, but when we preformed the play for Dick and Kori I was comfortable, and not in that "they're my friends of course I'm comfortable" kind of way. It was almost like I slipped into a second skin when I was up there preforming this thing.

I had a lot more fun with it than I had thought that I was going to have, if I was being honest with myself.

*

The night of the talent show the air was kind of sparkling, in way. I suppose it was because I was excited and even _I _finally was beginning to understand the phrase 'butterflies in your stomach'.

Vic, Gar, and I were at the backstage of the stage the mall had built years ago for things like this. Outside of the curtain I could hear a very badly played trumpet blasting and was wondering when it was going to be over. The poor kid who was playing this blasted instrument (no pun intended) was skinny, had glasses, and was obviously only in the sixth grade, or earlier. His mother had probably forced this upon him, there was no way he actually had _wanted _to do this. He had been petrified before he had been practically forced on stage by the woman in headphones and with a large clipboard.

When he strode backstage, however, the boy's chest was puffed up all proud. "I think that went pretty well myself, what did you think?" he asked the three of, not really expecting an answer, because he was giving himself the answer as he continued walking off the back of the stage. Vic, Gar, and I were suddenly all staring in opposite directions trying not to burst out laughing at this poor kid's delusions. We didn't want to have to be the ones to burst his bubble.

"You guys ready?" I whispered so that they couldn't hear us over the singer who was on stage now.

"Heck yeah, I've been waiting for this for ages," was Gar's reply. He was very confident about tonight, it was pretty obvious. Vic just nodded. Out of all of I think that he was actually the most nervous. Well, in a way I guess his part was the hardest because he had several to play but not as many lines as Gar and I.

When the applause started from the other side of the curtain I took a deep breath to settle my nerves. "And now Garfield Logan, Victor Stone, and Raven Roth in _Rocking Chair Fight _written by Tristan Jones," the announce called and I felt my wig to make sure it was in place one last time before going and sitting on the rocking chairs that were our only props, save Vic's costumes.

I sat down and heard Gar say on my left side say, "Say Margret would you look at that," about Vic walking in front of us wearing a Cat in the Hat costume, making the audience laugh. And then suddenly I wasn't Raven, I was Margret, and Gar wasn't Gar he was Donald and we were an old married couple who was watching an oddity walk up and down the street.

I settled into the familiar rhythm that only practice had provided and just barely realized that Gar had fumbled one of his lines, which was odd. He had been the first one to memorize his lines and had them down pat.

He was _supposed _to say, "That is not the same person Margret, just admit that I am right and you're wrong. You never admit that," but instead it came out more like, "That is not the same person Mar..." and then he trailed off.

I began mouthing the words to him, praying that he would snap out of the daze that he seemed to be in. It had suddenly gotten deathly quiet, or at least it seemed like it to me, and Vic was frozen in his place on right center stage.

Gar looked like he was trying to catch flies with his mouth open, and I realized that he was actually speechless and his eyes were directed at something behind my shoulders.

I turned around slowly, fearing whatever it was that could make Gar freak out this badly.

I would have recognized that flash of blonde hair anywhere.

Terra was back.

**A/N: Well, here we go again, a plot twist! Oh my! This story is acutally getting easier to write as I keep going. But it's still hard, because this piece is different than my other ones, it's different than any** **story that I've ever written. This is about the growth of a person, and I hope I'm portraying that okay. **

**About the passage/flashback at the beginning of this chapter, if I didn't explain it right and you want to know what I'm getting at, just ask. I actually saw this happening (as in they moved an **_**entire house**_**), like Raven, but it didn't have as big of an impact on me as is it did Raven. I was trying something new out here, because that's I what this story is about (not really). Trying new techniques.**

**My other fic, **_**Raven's Smile **_**was supposed to be lyrical and at the same time emotional. This story is supposed to be more straight foward and thoughtful. At the end of this story Raven is going to **_**change**_**, whether in a good or bad way I'm not sure. So yes, if you don't understand the point I'm getting at, just ask. I thought I did an okay job explaining it, but if I haven't then I'll explain if you ask. **

**Sorry for the epically long A/N, I'll keep it shorter next time. **

**Love,**

**RFE **


	6. Chapter Five

**Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans, because if I did would totally build a T shaped tower in my hometown. Okay, maybe not, but I still don't own them so it doesn't matter. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Five_

To say that we didn't get the money would be an understatement. We didn't get second prize either, which would have given us five hundred dollars each, and we didn't get third either, and that would have given each of us a hundred dollar gift card to any store in the mall (they actually gave third place to the kid, who in my opinion, couldn't play the trumpet to save his life, acutally). We got nothing, and we had to deal with it.

None of us were very upset, though. I think that we were more in some state of catatonic shock more than anything. It wasn't every day that someone who you thought was completely out of your life comes back in and shakes up your whole world. After the show we saw Kori's slightly stricken face and then I knew that Kori and Dick had seen her too. Was she doing this on purpose, coming out in public just to see our surprise?

Terra never said a word to any of us that I was aware of, although Gar just couldn't keep the surprised look off of his face for more than five seconds. It was odd to say the list, especially when I was wondering why the fact that he even noticed her first was bothering me. I mean, Terra is the one who broke up with _him. _But I digress.

*****

Terra was most

definitely

back.

I had saw her early in the morning while I made my way to art class, doing so I passed the office. I saw her and her mother signing forms and talking to the principal. Her mother was probably trying to convince the principal that _no_, her daughter would, _not be breaking anything_ this semester. Okay, so I was exaggerating a little bit when having this fantasy, so sue me.

When someone tells the whole entire student body that you are a lesbian hooker (not that there is anything wrong with being a lesbian hooker) you tend to think not so kind things about them.

Gar, of course, didn't seem to get the message. "Gar, stop staring at her!" I hissed at him while we were in the lunch line, me getting myself a bag of chips and some tea, and him getting the vegetarian entree which he had worked so hard to create (and frequently bashed). "She's going to look over here."

He stopped looking. "I just can't believe that she's back," he said.

"Neither can I," I mumbled.

"What?"

"Nothing! Why don't you go and try to talk to her if you insist on staring?"

"Because... I don't know, I can't just do that. We didn't exactly end on the best of terms, you know?"

"But the last time I saw Malchior, remember, I went and talked to him even though things had ended badly."

"Raven, you saw him at the grocery store talking to another girl and you went up to him and slapped him across the face. I don't really think of that as 'talking'."

"Yeah, but at least I confronted him right?"

Gar rubbed the back of his neck. "Do you really think that I should go talk to her?"

"Yes, I _think_ you should." I was being firm with this. This would be good for him, I hoped.

"Okay, can you just wait here for me, please?" he asked, waving to the general area of the front of the cafeteria where I would be able to see the two of them talking. I nodded.

I know this is going to be hard for him because he was right, they had _not _ended on a good note, not at all. But this was just who Gar was, he wanted to be able to settle everything with everyone as soon as he could.

Gar had really, really liked Terra probably to the point of love, not that he ever told me about his feelings for her, it was just obvious that they were there. He had looked at her like she hung the moon. It wasn't anyone's fault that she had ended up being all physco.

I didn't like her at first, not at all. I wasn't really sure why, but it was probably because she was encroaching on my propriety. But eventually we were spending so much time together that not liking her just not an option. So we became friends, tentatively, but still friends. I thought she was nice and funny. Thought being the main word here.

She ended up turning on all of us because she had thought that Gar had told us all her big 'secert'. As if it was his fault that one time at Dick's house during Movie Night we could hear here sticking her finger down her throat. This probably wasn't the first time, and we had been being the signs all along and we had been worried about her. So we confronted her about it, wanting to get better. She didn't take this exactly well and ended up not coming to school for three weeks.

We had all figured that she had moved, or gotten help, or something, but just like that she was back in our lives and we all became friends again and she and Gar continued their little romance. She put up a great front really, pretending to be our friends while the whole time she was just stabbing us in the back one at a time. I was first and she began telling everybody that I was a lesbian and would have sex for money with anyone. I got several offers and some boys began catcalling whenever I walked by. Once some boy touched me and when I had finished kicking him where the sun don't shine I asked him where he got the idea that it would be okay to touch me _anywhere_. He had answered "Terra."

They had all ended up answering "Terra," when we asked them. She caused Kori and Dick great pain when she began spreading rumors of Dick being seen with other girls, which of course made Kori cry and Terra had been the one who told her not to talk to him anymore. "Make him work," she had told Kori when we had both just watched her bawl her eyes out.

With Vic she had told the coach that she knew he was taking steroids, because she had seen him doing it. This caused a huge investigation and Vic had been in trouble for the longest time with both the police and his parents. Of course, it all ended up not being true, but the damage was done.

And Gar, she had saved the worst for last. She had made sure that he had seen her having sex with another guy... on his bed. He had been so cut up about it. Just thinking this makes me angry and I'm surprised when I look down and notice that I had broken my plastic cup full of tea. Oops.

Why is this bothering me so much now? It used to bother me before as well, but the feeling now seems to have intensified.

I'm watching them talk and I can barely stand it. They just look so freaking perfect together. My heart begins to clench, and I'm so surprised that I actually look down. What the heck?

I miss Terra's next words, but the look on her face is just so ugly that I can imagine what she's saying. Then she has the audacity to laugh, to actually laugh in Gar's face, and not exactly a good laugh.

I'm about to come over there and tell her something (and oh, I want to so bad) but Gar takes one look at me and just says, "C'mon, Raven."

"No, I want to go over there and talk to her. She has no reason to be such a bitch." I took a good look at his face. He didn't seem very hurt by what she had told him, just more resigned. I had to admit that I was surprised. When he said that he was over her, had he really meant it?

"Please don't," he said, and when he saw that I was about to march over there and give her a piece of my mind he grabbed my hand.

_He was holding my hand._

My fingers tightened around his unthinkingly, like it was just an insticnct, as if we had been doing this sort of thing our whole lives.

We got several looks as we walked to our lunch table, including some from the faculty, but I ignored them like I ignored the slight blush on my cheeks.

When we made it to the table everyone's eyebrows were raised. "What?" Gar asked. No one answered.

*****

When I got home I almost literally ran into Kevin. He look pissed and had a small box clenched in his hand. Uh oh. "Oh, sorry Raven," he said, and then he straightened up. "I really am sorry," he said again before walking out to his car. Weird.

When I got inside I threw my backpack down on the floor and was planning on getting some of my homework done when my mother called out from her painting room. "Raven, can you come here please? I need to talk to you."

"Sure," I answered. I had to admit I was a bit surprised. She sounded like what she had to say was important and it wasn't just something like she just wanted to show me her painting or something of the like.

"Raven, you may need to sit down for this." I hated conversations that started like this.

"Raven... I-I," my mother stuttered and then bit her lip. "Look, I'm not sure how to say this, but I'm going to have to tell you sometime, and you've probably already figured it out anyway so I might as well tell you now." She paused again.

"What?"

"I'mpregnant," she said all jumbled together, as if she was trying to say this as quickly as possible so that she wouldn't get in trouble.

"Excuse me?"

She breathed slowly in and out, one of her yoga moves. "I. Am. Pregnant. I'm having a baby, Raven."

"How far along are you?" I asked.

"Four months." She paused again. "Are you okay, you look kind of pale."

I shook my head. No, I was not okay. Not at all.

"Are you and Kevin getting married?"

"No, that's the thing. I don't want to rush into this just because I'm having a baby."

"How can you say you're rushing anything? You've been dating for a year!"

"I know but... I really like him. And I want this baby too."

Did she really think spending some time with me would make this okay, that going to the mall with me and trying to be a mother would make me okay with this? All of a sudden my mother's motives made sense. She had taken me shopping so she would feel less guilty, of course. To think I had acutally been worried about this.

I just couldn't believe that this was happening.

"I need to go to my room," I told her and crossed the hallway quickly into my room. I picked up the nearest breakable object, which happened to be a glass figurine and threw it against the wall. It made a satisfying shattering sound that pretty much described my world right now. Then I took one of my pillows, brought it to my face, and screamed long and hard until my throat began to burn.

Then I calmy sat down on my bed and picked up the phone.

"Hello?" the voice on the other line answered.

"Gar, hey it's me. Can you come pick me up please?"

**A/N: Not too pleased with this chapter. I couldn't get it right, but oh well. Raven just seems kind of off, you know? But I hope you enjoyed!**


	7. Chapter Six

**Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Six_

My mother tried to stop me on my way out. I ignored her. At this moment she was Arella, egg donor and also legal guardian. That's all. "Where are you going?" If today was a normal day I would have at least answered her. But not today, not now. I just walked out the door.

Gar's car was already in the parking lot by the time I got there. He took one look at my face and didn't say anything. We just drove around the city for a while before he asked, "What's wrong?"

"I don't really want to talk about it." My voice sounded detached. Each word was clipped and tight. I barely recognized that voice anymore.

"Okay. But you know, it makes it really hard to make someone feel better when they don't want to talk about things. You know I learned that the hard way." I nodded, I did know that.

"What would you do if Rita was pregnant?" I asked.

"What?" Gar took his eyes off the road and looked at me. "Oh Raven... oh please, please don't tell me that you're..." he trailed off suggestively and his eyes went from my face to my stomach and back again.

"Oh no, God no. Why would you even think that? No."

Gar suddenly looked relieved. "Okay, good. So where did that question come from?"

"It's just... my mother," I said finally.

"Ah." Gar's voice sounded understanding. He knew what the relationship between my mother and I was like, how just one slight unbalance on the precarious scale that we rested on could throw me off for good.

"Exactly. She's the one who's... who's... Oh God I can't even say it, it's just so ridiculous. She's pregnant, Gar. _Pregnant_. She's thirty-six! Most women shrivel up by now, but not her, oh no not her!"

"Actually a lot of women get pregnant at thirty-six, and it's not recommended exactly but it can happen."

I shot Gar a look. "How do you even know this?"

"Rita." That made sense. Gar's adopted mother was a RN and she probably talked about her work when she was at home.

"But still, that's not the point. I mean, she already as a kid; me! And I'm about to go off for college." I rubbed my temples. "This just isn't right."

"I know," Gar agreed, "but it was your mother's decision so don't you have to respect that."

"I'm pretty sure that she didn't exactly make a decision about this. She and Kevin aren't even getting married."

Gar let out a gust of air. "Oh, well that changes things."

"Exactly! Normally she would be all for marriage but not this time. My mother's a whore, Gar."

"Raven don't say that!"

"You don't know her like I do, Gar. I can call her whatever I want to. She had just better not treat the new baby the way she treated me," I said without thinking.

Then it dawned on me, if my mother was having another child would she treat it the same way she treated me? Would she abandon the unborn baby the way she had abandoned me? No, there was no way that I was going to let her do that to another child. I would adopt it before that ever happened. There will be no more me's in the world.

"Yes, I know that things were hard for you, and still are," he added quickly seeing that I was about to protest, "but maybe this will be her second chance. Maybe this can be her way to set things right with the universe."

Maybe she can set things right with the universe, but not with me. "Yeah, maybe," I said and then felt this unexpected wave of gratitude for Gar's friendship. He could always make me feel better without really trying.

"I'm so glad that I have a friend like you Gar," I popped off unexpectedly. That wasn't supposed to come out. All my words were flowing and I couldn't stop it. Word vomit, I think is what it's called.

Gar suddenly frowned. "Yeah, friend," he said and then looked out the window thoughtfully.

Gar frowning made me frown as well. Was it what I said? Did I say something wrong? I didn't think that I did, but I might have without realizing it yet. I had a habit of doing that sometimes. I didn't want to ask what was wrong so I made sure we quickly changed the subject.

*****

They say that tough times and hardships and adversity make you stronger.

I don't know about other people but tough times just made me angry. During the time of my mother's alcohol consumption I was first sad and then my sadness turned to anger. I didn't want to be sad for my mother, I didn't want to feel sorry for her or for myself any longer.

I then became so angry that I could barely see. The anger simmered underneath the surface of me and when you turned the temperature hotter it suddenly overflowed and became uncontrollable. I got into many fights for a long time, physical and verbal, but my friends still stood by me no matter how in the wrong I was.

That's why I owe so much to them. They became more than friends, they became my family. They raised me when my mother couldn't helped me along, knowing something was wrong but never speaking about it.

And for that I am eternally grateful.

*****

I ran into Terra, like literally ran into her causing us both to fall on the floor. "Oof," she said, landing primly on her butt. "Watch where you're going."

"Yeah, watch where your going," one of Terra's new lackey's, Claire I think her name is, called.

When Terra looked up and saw just who it was that had just knocked into her she smiled. "Oh, Raven... it's you. I've been waiting to talk to you for a while now."

I gritted my teeth. "Terra, just leave me alone, okay?" I walked away bound to be late to my next class now when Terra suddenly spoke again.

"I know what you're doing, you know," she smirked.

I couldn't help it, I turned around. "What are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about. Gar, Raven, Garfield Logan."

"Don't even say his name, you're not worth it you bitch."

"Are you really calling _me _a bitch, you hooker?"

"Do not call me that. Do not even talk to me or any of my friends ever again, do you understand me?"

"Or what, what are you going to do?" Terra's eyes suddenly turned taunting.

"Terra I think we should go," Claire began but Terra silenced her with a look.

"Claire shut up. Me and Raven here have some unfinished business to attend to."

"No, I'm acutally pretty sure our buisness was finished when you got sent to that clinic for that nasty habit of yours. What was it again? Oh yeah, sticking your pretty finger down your throat and making your barf go everywhere in our toilets."

Claire's eyes widened and I could tell that I had just struck a nerve with Terra. Her face turned an ugly puce color.

"Oh no, Raven, you better not say anymore. You don't want to get into a _fight _do you?" Now my eyes were the ones that were widened. Terra saw this and pounced. "Oh yes, Gar told me all about your horrible temper problems. Wouldn't want to make mommy start drinking again would we?" I froze how could she know about that too?

At this Claire gasped. I wanted to smack her. I could feel the fury making my fingertips tingle. This was always how fights began but I wasn't going to let my temper get the best of me, not this time.

"You don't know what you're talking about," my voice was clipped again and dripping with venom.

"Oh, but I do, Raven, I do. Gar, your _friend_, told me everything," she circled around me now, like a predator circling its prey. I never took my eyes off her. "He told me about your mother's 'problem' and how it affected you." Terra's face took on a fake pout. "How just very _angry _you got. And how you're fighting made your poor mother drink again and again and again."

"Stop it," I warned her. Soon the urge to punch her was going to become uncontrollable and I was going to do it. My fists where already clenched. I tried, and failed, to unclench them.

"It's really no wonder that everyone like me better than you, isn't it Raven? I mean, I am much better at controlling myself than you," she said silkily. That's it, I couldn't do this anymore, I just couldn't listen to her tell me how much better she was than me. I snapped.

I jumped on Terra and brought her to the floor. I punched her and watched as her head snapped back. But she smirked, this was what she had been waiting for. She grabbed my now long hair and pulled hard. She then brought her arm back and punched my lip, I could feel my lip burst. I had not been expecting that.

I grabbed one of her earrings and pulled. She gasped and pulled my shirt away from me. I could feel my shirt rip in her hands. She was about roll over and make me be the one on the bottom which would make her have the advantage when I heard a voice. "Raven?! What are you doing?"

It was Gar, of course. I turned and looked at him, my anger growing now. He had _told _her a secret, a precious secret that I had only entrusted him and Vic with. Terra got to her feet now and started panting. "I knew this would happen, I knew it," she said, but I ignored her.

"How could you tell her?" I demanded my voice growing louder and louder with each word until I was shouting at him. "Why would you tell her? I thought we were friends, Gar, but I guess not. Not anymore."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, looking confused.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Garfield. Just take your head out of your butt and think! _My mother_."

Realization dawned on his face. "Oh I never meant, I mean, I didn't think-" he was going to continue but I stopped him.

"Don't even try, Gar. Just don't, okay. I don't want to hear your lame excuses." I walked out the door and went to my car. I was just about to get in when I felt Gar grab my shoulder.

"If you'd just let me explain," he started, "I can-"

"Do _not _touch me," I growled at him. "Do not."

I got in my car and revved the engine when he attempted to get in front of my car, as if that was going to stop me. _Three chances Gar, three strikes and your out, _I thought. I was going to rev my engine one more time before I pealed out of her.

I took a glance in the mirror and saw a familiar face looking back at me. Busted lip, bruised face and messed up hair. Who ever would have thought that I would have had to see her ever again? Certainly not me. I thought that she was gone for good.

Gar realized what I was going to do just seconds before I did it. I revved the engine one last time before pealing off school grounds, never wanting to see him again.

**A/N: Whew! Writing this much drama is not good for the soul. But we shall see what is going to happen, shan't we? This is going to be such a fun ride!**

**Love,**

**RFE**


	8. Chapter Seven

**Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans, if I would the show Hannah Montana have more episodes than TT? I think not! (And I'm not trying to offend anyone, so if you like HM that's cool too.)**

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Seven_

To say I was mad would be like saying that Russia is a good sized country. Yes, my anger had grown to be the size of Russia. I was fuming in my car and I could feel the adrenaline coursing in my veins. This was the after effect of fights too, the adrenaline rush that came afterwards.

This is all second nature to me, which is also why it's just so scary. Who wants to be reminded of this? Who wants to be able to remember what it felt like to punch someone in the face... and to realize that it actually felt pretty damn good?

Not me, that's for sure. I keep waiting to wake up from my bed shell shocked. This just has to be a dream, it can't be real. Except it is. There is no way that I could dream up the pain of my throbbing lip. I remember the pain, but it was never as sharp as this. Terra could throw a nice punch I had to admit.

But how could he have _told _her. Gar had to have been the one to have told her, because Vic liked her about as much as I did even though you couldn't really tell. Vic's great at holding things in like that, very unlike me. I'm much more of a 'If I don't like you, you're going to know it' type person.

But why would he tell her something like that? Did she ask? Why would she ask? Why would she even care about me? She didn't even like me. Did he just give up the information readily or did he try to stall, the way he sometimes did with me when he was uneasy about answering a question?

Just thinking about it and wondering about the what ifs is making my head hurt. God, how could I have not known that Terra knew that? This just is killing me.

This was _my _private business, and _my _secrets and I'm pretty dang sure that now that Terra knows soon enough the whole world is going to know and it's not going to be good for me. They'll have the principal and the counselors all coming 'to my aid'. As if I need any of that. Please, I got over all of this a long time ago, which is how I stopped being a human time bomb.

But that's not even the worse part of all of this. The worst part is knowing that my trust in Gar is gone, or at least right now. If I was being honest with myself (which I am now beginning to realize that I hardly ever am) Gar had been my best friend. He was, and I had trusted him with everything. Well... maybe not everything, but it had been enough.

This is bothering me more than I thought it would, though. I used to be prepared for the worst, always and all the time. It's how I got through life. Disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. And this one isn't even the worst one, but it sure hurts the most.

I know things about him too, but I wouldn't tell anyone now. Like I remember the day after he broke up with Terra...

We were all at a party, one of those annoying ones where people just come to drink beer and get drunk and listen to crappy music. I had a major headache, and all of the whooping coming from the table top was not helping at all.

Dick came by and sat next to me on the couch, where I was rubbing my temples. "Hey, everything all right?"

"Just great," I said sarcastically. "Life doesn't get any better than drunks running around screaming and music so loud that you can't hear any speak. It's amazing."

"Yeah, I know this really isn't your thing, is it?"

"Oh Dick, you know me so well."

"Smart ass. Do you need some aspirin?"

"No, I'm fine right now... but can you tell Mr. Disco Duck over there to shut up? He really needs to lay off the keg." Gar was the one standing on the table, singing some song about 'Disco Ducks' and dancing around like a maniac, obviously drunk out his rear end.

"Eh, he's upset right now. He just got his heart broken."

Of course I knew that he was upset, of _course _he was upset. We all where after the 'Terra Crisis'. Having someone betray your trust isn't exactly the sort of thing that people wake up in the morning waiting for. You do _not _need to get drunk just to deal with things. Gar, of all people, should know that.

I take a sip of my water, the only nonalcoholic beverage here. "If his heart was really broken he'd be dead."

Dick winced. "Ouch, harsh."

"It's true though." I changed topics quickly, seeing the look on his face I could tell that a lecture was probably on its way (Dick often gives lectures, it's weird, but it's Dick so we all forgive him). "Where's Kori?"

"She hasn't gotten here yet. Oh wait, there she is," he waved. Kori saw us and waved back and began moving through the people to get to us. Dick began moving toward her too, leaving me by myself. I smiled, the two of them would be so great together, if Dick would just get his head out from his butt. Kori smiled brightly at him, and began talking animatedly, waving her hand and accidentally hitting someone in the back of the head. Oops.

I try to hide a smile and turn around, back to watching Mr. Disco Duck. _Oh, Gar, you're going to have so much fun in the morning._ I remember my mother waking up with nasty hangovers, she used to get so upset for no reason, and I was not to make any noise whatsoever.

I end up sitting on the couch and wonder at what time would it be acceptable to leave the party. I had only arrived an hour earlier, and I had a feeling that Kori would soon be looking for me, especially because she had just gotten here (A long time ago she had gotten the idea that being 'fashionably late' was a good thing to do after watch an American movie, so now she did it all the time, unless she was with one of us. But instead of being ten minutes late which was 'fashionable' she was always over an hour late. It could be very aggravating, to say the least.).

"Raven!" Speak of the devil. "Friend Raven, I did not think that you were coming! This is glorious."

"Oh, you know me Kori. I'm the life of the party," I said dryly.

"No you are not, you often say that you hate parties and that you hate being 'dragged' to them. And you usually don't even dance, you do not drink, and you go outside a lot and wait for us to come out. That is not the 'life of the party'. Am I correct?"

"I was…" I was going to explain it to her, but instead I just sighed. Kori never could understand the art of sarcasm. "Never mind." I shot a warning glance at Dick which said "I am in a bad mood and if you don't get your girlfriend away from me I'm going to hurt her." He got the message.

"C'mon, Kori, let's go over here."

"Okay?" She said, obviously confused but she went with Dick anyway.

I sighed and went to sit on the couch, waiting for Vic to come over and talk to me like he usally does at parties so that I could tell him to ask Gar not to be so obnoxious. If Vic told Gar to lay of the booze he more often than not listened to Vic. I could still hear him over the music, which was really saying something.

I never saw Vic though, and eventualloy became bored and started dozing off.

A few hours later I bolted up and heard quiet. Silence at last... that could only mean one thing, the party was over and I had fallen asleep there. I could feel the rough fabric of the couch, and the imprints that the fabric had left on the side of my face. I groaned and rubbed my hands over my face trying to clear my muddled head. Home. I needed to go home. My mother probably wasn't home, so I wouldn't be in trouble, but I still needed to go there. I wanted to sleep in my own bed and not on some strangers couch.

I yawned once more before slipping through the front door as quietly as I could. The moon was out, full and bright, but I could also see the hints of dawn. It had to be at least three in the morning, if not four.

It really was a beautiful night. I have always felt peace during the nighttime, even though you couldn't see the things that were in the dark just waiting to hurt you. But that was the way my life was, a series of things that just came out of the dark and grabbed me, surprising me and leaving me unawares. I'm not afraid of that, not anymore.  
I almost step on a dark figure a few hundred feet from the house where the party was. The figure says, "Mmph," before rolling over. I bend over to look more closely and realize that this is Gar.

"Gar?" I whisper, my voice sounded loud because of the quiet. We are in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Ugh," he replies, and that's how I know this is him.

"Where's Vic, he was supposed to take you home tonight," I reminded him. Vic usually was the designated driver, if it wasn't me. I never, ever, drank at parties and was planning on keeping it that way.

"He left. Got made at me." Gar groaned.

"Come on," I tell him, grabbing his hand and making him stand up on his own feet before he wobbles and falls over. I quickly catch him and put my arm around him so he can steady himself. "We're going to my house." I only lived a couple more blocks away, which would take a while before we got there, if I continued carrying Gar. I leaned in and sniffed him, and learned that he smelled heavily of liquor and vomit. Lovely.

"You smell disgusting." I can't help saying this, because it's so true. Besides, he won't remember any of this in the morning.

When we get to the apartment I open the door to my room with my foot. No one goes into my room except me, ever. Especially not my mother, if she ever went into my room I'm pretty sure that I would go bezerk on her, and she knows it. My room has always been the one thing that was mine. I decorated it the way I wanted to (which, now if I thought about it, was kind of weird) and kept it spotless all the time. Not one bit of my mother influenced this room. It was all mine.

This however, was an exception. For one thing we didn't have another bed, and I was pretty sure that my mother would not appreciate it if she walked in and saw vomit on her couch, which is what she began sleeping on after she turned her bedroom into her 'artistic space'. She gave me the master bedroom. She owed me that much.

I brought Gar over to the bed and watched him fall with an ungraceful _plop_. My bed springs groaned in protest. He'll be fine, I thought, and went to sleep on the floor just in case. I was just bringing myself some other blankets and a pillow when I heard him retching. He was throwing up on my bed. _Great.  
_

"Bathroom. Now," I told him, and he seemed to understand, as groggy as he seemed to be. I dragged him away from my bathroom (I would let him in my room, but my bathroom was mine and I was not going to let him barf all over it.) and took him to the one we have near the kitchen. We just barely made it to the toilet when he started making horrible hacking sounds. His barf was chunky. Fabulous.

I waited by the door unsure of what to do exactly. I couldn't exactly hold his hair back, and I wouldn't feel right comforting him. Even though we had been friends since the fourth grade we were always the two that were the most different. We argued often, and just didn't seem to ever see eye to eye. We were friends, so of course I cared about him, but at one point in time I was pretty sure that Gar hated me. I didn't blame him. I was awful to him during the years my mother was a lush.

I decided to run him some water in the shower, and then I told him that when he was done he could shower and clean himself up. He didn't object so I left him in the bathroom puking his guts out (one of the nastiest parts of drinking, in my opinion) and went to my bedroom to change the sheets. The smell of throw up wasn't going to come out of my bed for weeks, I was pretty sure.

I went again to check on Gar and saw him in the shower. He was standing there with his clothes on. Well, he was not going to get undressed by me. I quickly turned the water off and dragged back to my bed and told him, "Stay."

Gar nodded once before saying, "Thanks," and then promptly passing out.

I slept lightly until about nine and saw that Gar was still sleeping, peacefully and content. I went to the kitchen and quickly made a pot of coffee, knowing that was what he was going to want, at least right now. I then began scrambling some eggs and let them get greasy, also knowing that greasy food was going to be the one thing that he would not want to be smelling right now. It was both a punishment and a saving trick. I learned both these things from my mother, who over the years had gotten so hungover that I could easily recognize the signs.

I heard the door creak open as I finished the eggs. "Sit," I demanded and he did as he was told, going over to the stools and sitting down on the center one. He looked expectant, and also a little bit wary, like he was just waiting for me to start yelling at him, which I was planning on doing. His clothes were still damp, but at least now he didn't smell like vomit. I went over to the counter and poured him a mug of coffee and placed it gently in front of him with the eggs. He pushed them away, like I expected him to, but he drank the coffee eagerly. He had evidently been through this before.

I wasn't exactly sure how I felt about that.

I then went and got the pamphlets and then sat down on the stool next to him. "Why?" I asked softly.

"I don't know, Raven. I really don't. I guess it was just because I was feeling upset... or, or I don't know!" He looked honestly upset. He knew why this would bother me, he and Vic were the only people that had seen my mother drunk, and then they both had gotten the full story. They were the only ones who knew, and I had planned on it staying that way.

"That's not a reason. If you have to get drunk to feel good then you are weak. You can talk to someone about this, you know that, right?" I handed him the three pamphlets. He took them, confused.

"The first two pamphlets are for some AA clubs around here. The first one meets at the Y, and the second one meets at a church and the pastor is really nice."

Gar held up the third one. "What about this one, it's empty."

"It's for me. Or any of us, really. We're here to listen to you at any time, I promise. Even me."

The look on his face was unfathomable, and he was looking at me like he had just seen me clearly for the very first time. I got up to get myself some coffee and he grabbed my wrist just as I turned to go. I turned back, surprised. "Thank you," he said. I only nodded in response.

**A/N: Well, that's the end of another chapter, and a packed one at that. Sorry it took so long for me to post, but I should be posting more regularly soon. ****  
**


	9. Chapter Eight

**Disclaimer: If I owned Teen Titans I wouldn't be running out of creative ways to write disclaimers, would I?**

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Eight_

I have never really realized how boring study hall is without Gar being there to talk to. The 'teacher' who teaches this class (who, in reality is just a senile coach who the school board hasn't made him retire yet because he coached just about everybody who's on the school board most probably) is legally deaf, we think, and so you can make about as much noise as you want to as long as he doesn't notice that your talking.

This feat, as difficult as it seems, isn't very hard at all. All you have to do is put an open book in front of you and occasionally glance at it when he's looking. When he leaves the room the whole class goes insane until he comes back, and when he does we are all sitting in our desks and being angels. _Right. _

So because of this I usually spent my time in study hall either talking to Gar, reading a book, or more often than not doing both. Now, however, because of the fight that Gar and I were in (At least that's how I looked at it. I was mad at him, and he was just kind of confused about everything, and when he figured out what he did wrong he was apologetic and just wanted to explain, but I didn't want to listen.) I tried to avoid him as much as possible, which was actually kind of easy considering the fact that I had only two classes with him and didn't necessarily have to eat lunch with him.

Okay, I was kind of avoiding him, mainly because I knew that seeing him would just make me upset again, and the _last _thing that I needed was to get into another fight. When I returned to school the next day (Claire, the little snitch, had ran to get the vice principal and they had returned by the time that I was already gone so that he only got Terra's side of the story) I got a stern talking to and a day of In School Suspension, which to be honest wasn't even that bad.

But after I got out of ISS my day got all messed up. I had never realized how much time that I spent with Gar, he took up practically my whole day! I wasn't sure how I hadn't noticed how much of my time he ate up, but he did. Suddenly I had time to burn and I wasn't sure how to spend it. I didn't want to go back to being by myself all the time, I certainly couldn't go with Dick and Kori as much as I could with Gar, and Vic was usually at some kind of sport practice or sporting even or something with his mechanics that I couldn't go to. I tried for a while to help him with his baby, but it wasn't that I was exactly interested in so I was stuck.

I couldn't very well go _home_that would be about as good for me as a bed made of porcupine quills. My egg donor was too busy being blissfully happy for her to have even given me a second glance. Kevin came around more often, probably trying to get my mother to marry him, but she still resisted and they were only just 'together'. Boyfriend, girlfriend. Partners, or whatever other hippie crap that my lovely egg donor was into.

At first Gar had tried to come up to me and speak, but the look on my face, or something else, made him stop and decide not to say anything after all. This was probably the best thing for everybody involved.

Sometimes in the classes that we have together I see him looking at me dejectedly and I have to admit that sometimes I'm very tempted to go and talk to him and listen to his side of the story. But then I remember Terra's smirking face and I just can't do. My fury starts to burn again and suddenly I have nothing to say to him.

None of the others have bothered to tell me anything about it either, and I think that this is a good thing too. If they don't get into the middle of it then it's just between Gar and I and that's the best way to be. Besides, Dick and Kori had no idea about my mother. I'm pretty sure, though, that Dick had some kind of inkling that _something _was wrong, but I doubt he ever figured out what it was.

_*****_

About a week after my fight with Terra Vic came up to me. "Hey."

"Hey," I answered, a bit confused. He hadn't talked to me in a while, probably because of his loyalty to Gar, and I was a bit surprised to see him sitting next to me during lunch. The only thing that I had with me was my backpack, and apple, and my book. Vic didn't have any food with him, and he leaned against the tree looking at me.

"Look, Raven, I know you're made at him, but-"

"Please don't tell me that you're here because you want me to start talking to Gar again. Kori already tried this a few days ago, and if you hadn't noticed I didn't exactly listen to her either."

Vic held his hands up in front of his chest to defend himself. "Look, all I'm saying is you need to think about it, okay."

"But why should _I_? He's the one that told somebody about my mother and her little 'issuses'," I turned my head back and forth, checking to see if anyone was listening. No one was. "I mean, you didn't tell anybody, right?"

Vic opened his mouth to say something and then stopped and shook his head. I smirked. "Exactly."

"Raven, come on. You can't be mad at him forever."

I rose an eyebrow. "I can't?"

"No you can't. Come on, Raven, he's really upset. I mean you have to look at things from his point of view. It's not like Gar told Terra anything _now_. He told her while they were still dating. He thought that she could be trusted. We all did, Raven, you have to admit that. Besides, you and I both know that Gar is really trusting, especially to people that he shouldn't be."

"I know, but that's still not an excuse. I can't trust him anymore than I can throw him now."

"Raven, he made a mistake once, but everyone does that. You can't be friends with somebody if you don't expect them to have their faults. Friendship doesn't work like that. _Life _doesn't work like that."

"I know that-"

"Do you really? Because it doesn't seem to me like you do. This ridiculousness has gone on long enough."

"What are you talking about? I have every reason to be mad at him."

Vic sighed. "Look, Raven, I promised myself that I wouldn't say this, because things probably wouldn't go well for me, but well I'm sick of the little grass stain being all mopey. You guys were friends, right? Like best friends before all of this happened." Vic shot me a threatening look, so I nodded.

"Yes, I guess we were. Why does that matter anyway?"

"Okay. Look, I _really _didn't want to be the one to say this. I really, really didn't want to be say this," he mumbled this last part to himself.

"Say what, Vic?" I was getting irritated by his evasiveness. Couldn't he just tell me what the heck was going on?!

"Gar likes you Raven. Like, more than as a friend. And I'm pretty sure that you feel the same way. I might be totally wrong about you, Lord knows I've been wrong about you before, but I'm pretty sure I'm spot on with this one."

"Wh-what?" I had to admit that I was a bit dazed. _Gar _liked me? Gar _liked _me? Gar liked _me_?

Not a snowball's chance in hell. Vic totally had it all wrong.

"Raven, please don't make me say it again. Gar's going to kill me when he finds out that I told you. He was planning on doing it differently, but then you got mad at him and all of this Terra hullabaloo happened and yes, things didn't exactly turn out the way he wanted them to."

I was speechless, a rare thing for me. Usually I was the first one to come up with a smart comment or sarcastic comeback. Now I wasn't exactly sure what to say anymore. Vic chuckled. "Oh, if only you could see your face right now."

I chocked on my own spit, trying to think of something to say. My mind was still blank, and nothing was making any sense. Now my heart was pumping faster and there was an old emotion that began glimmering inside of me. The crazy thing was that I knew what it was.

_Hope. _

"Raven? Say something. You look like you're about to choke. Raven!" Vic leaned across himself and gave me a hard pat on the back. When I didn't respond he gave me another one, even harder making my whole body vibrate. "Are you having a panic attack?"

At that moment it seemed to me like I was. My heart began racing even faster to uncomfortable levels, and my vision was getting blurry. I forced myself to take a deep breath and then... nothing. Thank God.

"Something." I retorted.

"Vic's face cleared into a smile. "There we go. Now, do you promise me that you're going to talk to Gar. Right?"

Gar. Gar, the green haired previously blonde boy who liked me, as more than a friend. "Right," I managed to get out. Of course I was. I was going to have a word or two with him about liking me too, while I was at it. He didn't really know what he was getting himself into by liking me.

Not at all.

**A/N: I have to say I enjoyed writing this chapter. I'm not going to lie, but I liked Raven having to be faced with that. Who else was like **_**finally**_** you realize it? And the sad thing was someone else had to tell her! Thick headed much? Sorry this is so short, but eh. Hope you enjoyed! **


	10. Chapter Nine

**Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans. I do, however, own some sunscreen that I probably need to use more often. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Nine_

My head is spinning. No, the whole world is spinning. I don't know how to deal with this. Garfield Logan cannot like me (as anything more than a friend that is). He just _can't_. It isn't allowed, not in the little world that I have created. I can't allow that to happen.

Gar should have someone better than I am. Someone that isn't as messed up as me, someone who wouldn't push him away like I've been doing for the past two weeks. He needs someone like... like...

The saddest thing is that I can't see him with anyone except for me.

But _why_? I don't like him, in the way that Vic told me that he likes me. Do I?

I really hate questioning myself.

But he's, he's just so... Gar. I don't like imagining him with another girl, kissing her, holding her hand... but when I try to see that with me I just can't.

I've always been alone. Always. The one time that I had a boyfriend I ended up having my heart shattered and crying my eyes out. I don't want that to happen again, ever. I've locked myself up and away in a tower and I doubt that I'll be getting out of it any time soon, even for Gar.

I have to go straighten things out with him. If I don't he'll probably end up liking me until we graduate, and that's a very long time for now. I'm really not worth pining over. Not that he's pining over me, of course. I didn't think that he was it's just... I'm really freaking confused.

Because, number one, why does it actually make me feel kind of... happy that I finally knows that he likes me? It shouldn't, it shouldn't even affect me.

And number two, why do I think that I actually like him back, in that way?

Is it because sometimes when we were alone he would smile at me and something, at the bottom of my stomach, would feel funny? It could have been the ulcer that I had a few years ago, but I was pretty sure that, that wasn't what the feeling was.

Is it because he tries so hard to make me laugh, and no matter how much I say that he isn't funny I really think that he _is _and that's something that I would never admit to him in a million years?

Is it because sometimes he stands up for himself and won't take the crap that I dish out for him when he doesn't deserve it?

Is it because it's just _him _and the combination of all of things things and so many others that make me feel like something special? Is that it?

I'm not really sure if I've ever felt like this before. I mean yeah, I've had crushes on people before, and I've had a boyfriend before... but this isn't the same thing. It's different... other.

Am I going crazy? I might be. Emotion can make you do that.

I'm walking into the cafeteriaandmyhead is so full of these thoughts that I run into Gar, literally straight into him. I'm falling and he catches my arm and helps me up. "Sorry, he says as I'm standing up straight." When he sees who I am he recoils and let's go of my arm as if it's on fire.

We look at each other before I say, "Look, can we talk? You don't mind missing health, do you?" He shakes his head and opens the door for me, as chivalrous as ever.

"Thank you," I tell him, just as I do every other time he holds open the door for me. It's almost like before except it's not. There's a noticeable tension in the air, and Gar looks extremely uncomfortable. Was I really that ugly to him?

"So..." he starts just after the bell for sixth period rings. "What's up?"

"I've missed you," I admit, and immediately wish that I could stuff the words straight into my mouth. I wasn't supposed to say that. I wasn't supposed to make up with him, but it just sort of came out.

But it's true too. I have missed him. A lot. More than I want to admit, actually. And Kori and Vic were right. He didn't deserve it. Any of it.

When I tell him that Gar grins widely, and that makes me feel just a bit better. "I've missed you too."

"I'm sorry that I was so mean to you. You didn't deserve it. I know that you told Terra before we became really good friends and I was... over reacting. I have a tendency to do that sometimes," I say sheepishly. It feels good that we've gotten past this now. It makes me feel as if I have a weight lifted off my chest.

"You, over react? Never. I've never seen you over react." Gar pretends to be shocked, and I roll my eyes. He can be such an idiot.

"I'm guessing that's a 'you're forgiven' in Garfield-ese?"

"Something like that."

"Well now that that's out of the way... well..."

"Yes?"

I bite my lip. I really don't want to say this. I don't want to ruin my friendship with Gar again. But I also don't want him to have... feelings for me that just a friend shouldn't. It wouldn't be fair to him, and I just want him to be happy.

"I know." It's better for him if I just put it out in the open. It's easier for me too, because I just can't say the words out loud, lest I start freaking out again.

"I know that you know," he replies, and I'm instantly relieved. Well at least Vic got over to him before I did.

"So Vic told you that he told me? Good. Now about that..." I'm about to continue but then he cuts me off.

"What is it that we know?" he asks and I'm abruptly exasperated. He was supposed to already _know_!

"Um... I know that you um..." I'm unable to finish. Why is this so dang hard?! It shouldn't be.

"I know. I know how you feel about me."

"Well, duh I care about you. You're my best friend." While his saying that made a warm feeling appear in my stomach that isn't exactly what I had in mind. These aren't exactly _friendship _feelings that we're talking about. Because the more that I think about it, the more I'm thinking that I feel more for him than just a friend too. And that's the scariest part of all.

"I wasn't talking about, um... those kind of feelings even though those kind of feelings are very good too. Like extremely. What I'm trying to say is..." I'm babbling. Why am I babbling? I sound like an idiot and it's not attractive at all. What is wrong with me. I take a deep breath and regain my control over myself, thank God. "I know that you like me as more than a friend, Gar," I say this softly so that it doesn't seem harsh.

Instantly his joking and relaxed features tense up. "And Vic told you this?" he asked.

"Yes. He did. And I mean I'm flattered and everything but..."

"But you don't feel the same way," he says flatly, taking the words out of my mouth.

"Exactly," I tell him.

Gar runs a hand through his hair. "But that's the thing, though. If you could only _see _yourself. I think you could, like me in that way at least, if you just allowed yourself. But you won't. And I don't know why. You enjoy my company, right?"

"Yes, but I enjoy hanging out with all of my friends."

"But it's _different _with us. You know it too, don't deny it," he said, flashing me a look as I opened my mouth to do that very thing.

"But..."

"But nothing, Raven. Why can't you just open your eyes and see it? Kori has noticed, she told me something about it the other day. Vic and Dick have noticed too. Even I've seen it, and you and I both know that I'm the most obtuse person in the world... you're the only one who's too blind to see it."

"Are you calling me blind?"I challenged.

"That's _exactly _what I'm what I'm calling you. Why can't you just let yourself _feel_? I know he hurt you really bad, Raven, but that doesn't mean anything. I'm not anything like him, at all. I won't ever hurt you or use you. Ever. I genuinely care about you."

"But what if things don't work out? What if we can't stay friends? You know people always say they're going to stay friends, but they never do. It's always horribly awkward afterwords. You've experienced that too."

"You can't live your life wondering about the what ifs. You can't hold yourself back just because you have a possibility of getting hurt. You're one of the strongest people that I know, Raven, but you're also one of the most afraid. Why?" He's gazing at me thoughtfully. I've never seen him like this before. He's always just been Gar, my goofy and at times insufferable best friend. I don't know who he is when he's all serious like this.

"I don't know, Dr. Phil! Why don't you diagnose me?" I could tell that I was getting defensive, but I honestly didn't care. Who the hell was he to tell me that I wasn't living my life the way that I should? He didn't know anything. "You can't tell me how to live my life."

"You're right, I can't. But I can say that you're missing out on a lot."

"I'm not missing out on anything."

Gar stands up. "That's what you think. Look, Raven, whatever. I really like you, I have for a long time, and I'm going to keep on liking you until you realize that you have feelings for me back. I've gotta go."

I'm left sitting there in bewilderment. This wasn't how the talk was supposed to go... but then again nothing goes as planned. And I don't think that it ever will.

But do I like him? Like honest to goodness liking, which everyone knows is the first stage to the big l-word?

I don't think I do... but that's also probably because I've always been very good at repressing things that I feel like need to be repressed.

It shouldn't hurt me this much to see him walk away from me like that, almost as if he's giving up on me.

I can feel a break down coming on and I will myself to calm down again. I need to be rational about this.

But love is never rational.

Love? Where did that come from?

I don't _love _anybody.

I just like him. A lot. Thinking these words consciously feels really good, refreshing almost. It's as if I've locked those words in a closet and they just suddenly been let into fresh air.

I sigh and stand up. I know what I have to do.

I ring the doorbell and step back just in case he opens the door with too much gusto, like he's been known to do. Through the door I can hear him yelling, "I've got it," and Rita's faint reply. I take a deep breath to brace myself as he opens the door.

The look on his face is one of intense shock. I can tell that he wasn't expecting this. I put my hands in front of me nervously. "I want to try this. Us. I want to try us."

He's still looking at me, surprised. "Okay."

We both stand there in silence for a while before I speak again. "Okay? Is that the only thing that you have to say? Kiss me you idiot."

He does. And it's amazing, it's just like I imagined. He kisses me and I feel like I'm going to melt in my shoes. It's not exactly fireworks and flashing lights, but I know that these things will come later.

And then just like that he pulls away. I just look at him, waiting for him to kiss me again. He just stands there with that stupid smile on his face, the one that I just want to smack off. "So you think I'm funny?"

"Excuse me?"

"Remember? You once said 'The day that I find you remotely funny is the day that I kiss you,'*****. And now you have. So you _do _think I'm funny."

"You sure do know how to ruin the moment, don't you?"

He grins wider. "I sure do."

*** Look back at Chapter One for this reference!**

**A/N: Whew! Who else is saying finally? I sure am. Hope you enjoyed. Don't worry... we'll have more drama later on, haha. :) Hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it! **


	11. Chapter Ten

**Disclaimer: If I said that I owned Teen Titans in any way, shape, or form, I'd be lying.**

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Ten_

He was holding my hand. In the past month I had been reveling in how good this felt, how good it always felt when he touched me in the simplest of ways.

I smiled at him, letting my self slip into happiness. I liked the fact that we were together now, more than I thought that I would. At first I had been afraid that things were going to be awkward, as they sometimes were when friends became more, but my worrying had been silly.

"Well, things aren't going to be any different than they were before, except for the fact that when we go somewhere I'm going to be holding your hand and you're going to have to let me pay. And I can kiss you whenever I want to now too," he had said, and that's basically how it had been.

I was content. With him, just like before when we were just friends, I forgot about the things that stressed me out like my mother, school work, Terra, or just things in general that might make me want to tear my hair out. With him I could just simply be myself, and that was enough for the both of us.

When we had first told people that we were an item, while our friends and been okay with it (Vic in particular had looked smug when we told them, probably because he knew that he had helped us get along.) everyone else had been surprised.

Even our friends in Steel City had raised their eyebrows. "It's not that it's a bad thing," Garth told me one day as I was waiting for Gar to come pick me up because we were going to the movies, "it's just that you two are so different. Guess I should have seen it coming, though."

As far as I knew the only person that had a problem with the two of us being together had been Terra, and neither Gar nor I really care. She had come up to me and started shouting at me, but I had been surprised at how easy it was to walk away and just ignore her. Recently she had taken to glaring at the two of us when we were together but Gar had been able to laugh it off and so had I.

In the beginning I had been so shocked to find that we could have a relationship so easily, but Gar had told me that of course it was going to be easy for us. Why wouldn't it be? Of course we've had our share of fights, but they had only been little things, the sort of things that we had always had because our temperaments have always been so different. They were almost expected now and they never lasted more than a few hours at the most.

While I was thinking about these things Gar looked at me and raised his eyebrows. "What?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. I realized that I was still smiling at him.

"Nothing," I answered. "I guess I'm just happy."

That was enough for the both of us.

Mrs. Baros' project had been looming on my mind for a while now. She had been giving us little reminders in class and I knew that I had been putting it off for too long now. I had just been spending so much time with Gar that I just didn't care about it anymore. Besides my topic had been ridiculous. Romantic love. Ugh. What a sappy topic.

I had to start interviewing people soon. Mrs. Baros had given us a worksheet. I had to interview four people at the very minimum, and that was enough for me. I could do my Gar, Vic, Kori, Dick, and my mother, if I wanted to talk to her. If not, I could find someone else and I could do it.

I decided to start that today. I might as well start it now and get it over with as soon as I'm able to. But who should I interview first?

I can't really make up my mind just yet. I don't want to do Gar... that's just open a very unwelcome can of worms, and Vic's absent today, he probably has the stomach flu that's been going around lately. I don't want to interview Kori just yet, though, because I don't have it in me right now. I can see her views on this subject as being as mushy as some of the romance movies that she watches (or romance novels that she reads) and I don't think that I can stomach that right now.

So that leaves Dick.

Dick and I have a very different, very special kind of relationship. In our little 'clan' he was the first person that I became friends with. We were, and still are, very similar people who have the same view on life, somewhat. We both are private and slightly introverted people. I used to have a crush on him, until I realized that we would never, ever work. We are far too similar and we need people that will help us get out of our shells. That's what he has Kori for, and now I have Gar.

I'm expecting him to have the same kind of view on romantic love as I do, slightly mushy and idiotic (although I know he loves Kori dearly).

But when I ask him his answer surprises me. "Well," he paused. "To me that kind of love is... selfless. When you love someone you want to do anything that you can for them, even if that means that you might hurt yourself in the process."

This shocked the crap out of me. What the heck? Where did this come from? I wasn't expecting this, that's for sure.

"Erm..." I say, scribbling down on the paper what he had just said. "Anything else?" I ask.

Dick's eyebrows mesh together, evidently now he's lost in thought. "Well, yeah. I mean, this is a pretty deep subject, isn't it? Romantic love. That's something people have been trying to figure out since the beginning of time. I also think that, well, it should should be with someone that means something to you. What I mean, is, that you shouldn't say 'I love you' to just anyone. You have to mean it when you say. And know when you do too." I quickly write down the words, mean something and know it- be aware.

I have to admit that his answer shocks me a bit. I was so sure that we would be alike in this one thing, just like we were in so many others. For a long time Dick had been my best friend, our similarities had drawn us together. But now I could see that he was grown in ways that I was not. Whether or not that was because of Kori I won't ever know.

"That all?"

Dick grins. "Yep," he answers. "That's all I've got."

"Well thanks, I guess. It's something at least. My paper'll have to be pretty short, though."

"Probably, if you keep getting answers like me. You know, Raven, that's a pretty strange subject for you to have to be writing on it. I mean, everyone knows that you don't exactly have the best of luck with that sort of thing."

The look on my face keeps him from saying anything else, which is a wise move on his part. "Yeah, I now. It is, isn't it?"

"You don't think that she did that on purpose, do you?" There Dick goes, being his suspicious self.

"No, I'm sure she didn't. She gave Will Davies the topic of football fans, and he plays football. I'm pretty sure that this thing was pretty random."

"Probably," he repeats. "Makes me feel lucky that I'm not in AP English, to tell you the truth, though" he replies.

"Oh, shut it you," I tell him.

I'm reading in my desk during study hall when I feel someone's hand's covering my eyes and leaving me blind. Knowing who it is the corners of my mouth twitch, and then my calm facade is back on.

"Guess who?" Gar asks, deepening his voice to make him voice sound deeper than it already was. It's a futile effort, though. I know who it is.

I decided to play his game, just this once. I don't want to burst his bubble just yet. Besides, our relationship has yet to get through the euphoria phase yet, even though eventually I'm pretty sure that it will. It happened with me and Malchior, after all. "Is this... Mr. Biggers?" I ask, refering to our study hall teacher, the deaf one.

"No... not him."

"Is it... Robert Goode?" I ask, now just saying a random name.

"Nope!" he says gleefully.

"Dick Grayson?"

"You're possibly getting closer."

"Garth?"

The hands leave my eyes at once. "You just had to do that, didn't you?" Gar asks, frowning. "Always have to ruin my fun," he mutters.

"Always," I reply with a grin.

**A/N: So sorry I haven't updated, but I've been busy! I know, lousy excuse, but school's almost out and then I'll be able to update more quickly (I hope). Anywhoo, not much going on in this chapter other than time speeding up. I want to give them some fluff and happiness for a while... before the other stuff. Hope you enjoyed! **


	12. Chapter Eleven

**Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't sue. Please and thank you. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Eleven_

My mother was huge. There really was no getting around it. We had formed a fragile truce (that's how I saw it, at least) about a week after a month that Gar and I got together and now my mother was comfortable enough to complain to me about how small her shirts were getting and how big her stomach was getting. As well as how her ankles were swollen and how hungry she was all the time now that her baby was getting bigger.

As far as I'm concerned that's all her fault and she really shouldn't be complaining, but it's not like I could actually tell her that. And if I did I did she would probably just burst into tears. She was also getting horribly hormonal. I was about to die with her.

She would one moment be laughing and the next minute crying. It was awful, and I could tell that Kevin was just as bewildered as I was. I had never spent much time with pregnant people so I had not experienced mood swings to this level before. For once I was actually scared of my mother. I tend to be frightened of emotions, especially out of control ones.

Kevin and my mother still are at a crossroads, simply because of the fact that my mother still refuses to marry him. I'm not entirely sure why, because he's already knocked her up, but she just wants to "Take this one slower" because she "really loves Kevin and doesn't want to have to introduce him to the lawyers".

Personally I think the whole thing is a bit idiotic. He stills sends her emails constantly that say things like _I love you honey bunches of oats _(If I could write back to him I would respond with 'Please, sir, just gag me with a spoon. You make me vomit.' but sadly my mother would probably know that I wrote that and get mad at me. Or cry at me. Whatever. It's not my fault she leaves her email open on our _shared _computer, which makes me have access to it.) or send her little things that throughout his day remind him of her.

He sends her things like this daily, as in more than once a day. My mother finds these things cute and loves quoting them throughout her day. She likes telling me them too, as if I care. I'm pretty sure she even prints some of them out and puts them in one of her many massive clutter drawers. I've seen them too. It's quite disturbing.

Personally I think that it's quite pathetic that my mother should need such reminders and reassurances. _I _wouldn't need them, and Gar knows better than to try and sweet talk me. I would respond sarcastically so fast that he wouldn't know what hit him.

..O..

Winter was coming and I had to admit that I was excited. Winter has always been my favorite season (and, despite what everyone thinks it is not just because Christmas comes with winter). The cold weather gave Gar a reason to have to hold my hand, which I thought was a laugh, really. He told me that we "Had to hold hands," because it was cheaper than buying hand warmers for him and it would help his economy. I rolled my eyes when he said that.

Of course I had to bring up his other hand, and he said that I could try and hold that one too, but I point blank refused that. How weird would it look watching a couple in the park linked by two hands instead of just one?

The approach of winter honestly was only one of the ways that I began noticing that time was passing. Time with Gar seemed to pass by quickly in blurs and lulls, but mainly blurs. Before I knew it we had been going out for two months when it just seemed like yesterday when I had gone to his house and told him to kiss me.

But time doesn't slow down for anyone, least of all me.

..O..

The paper was still weighing on me and I had to ask more people. After Dick I asked Vic, because, in all honestly, it was the easiest for me, and because I still wanted the male perspective.

I decided to ask Gar last because the last thing that we need was for the _l_-word to mess things up for us. That would make things far more complicated than they needed to be.

But when I asked him he began laughing, which was made me raise my eyebrows. What was his problem?

"What?" I asked him, my eyebrows meshed together. I didn't understand the joke.

"No, I just can't believe that you asked _me _of all people. I haven't had a girlfriend since freshmen year." He was, of course, referring to Jinx Diaz, who had moved away in tenth grade and was now dating some track star named Wally West. They had broken up for reasons that were unknown to me, but I was pretty sure that things weren't too horrible when they ended. Vic wasn't on bad terms with much of anyone.

"And?" I pressed on. "So what? You know what love is, I hope. You've been in love, haven't you?"

"No," he pointed at me and raised his eyebrows. "I haven't, actually. Besides, I think that your topic is way to narrow. You can't talk about _romantic love _without talking about the other kind of love too. Love is an extremely broad term. You can't just talk about one kind. It's like butt cheeks, you can't have one without the other."

"Um, okay," I shrugged and wrote down _butt cheeks_. Lord knows that I was going to use that phrase again in the future, possibly about Kori and Dick.

"You still look confused. Okay, look," he paused and frowned for a moment before looking at me again. "You know that you have to have the weirdest topic ever, right?"

"Actually, I don't. One kid in my class pulled out cat litter. But that's not what we're talking about. Please don't get me off topic. I just need this interview done with so that I can go bother someone else next."

"Anyway, before we got 'off topic' or whatever think about it with Kori and Dick. They seem safest," he mumbled this last line so that I could barely understand what he was saying, or comprehend the meaning behind it before he began talking again. "Kori and Dick are in love with each other. Like, the romantic way, right?"

"Duh."

"But they don't just love each other like that. They also love each other as friends, even though their relationship isn't exactly brother and sister like ours is anymore. If they broke up do you still think that they could be friends?"

"That depends on the breakup, I guess. But yeah, I think they 'd still care about each other, at the very least."

"Exactly. It's like I said before. Love is a broad term that people often try to stuff into subtexts and boxes that just don't fit."

"Got it. Thanks, Vic." I scribbled down everything that I got from that conversation, which to be quite honest was a lot more than I got from Vic. Everyone's answers, it seemed, were going to continue to surprise me. Vic must have put a lot of thought into this, more than I would have thought that he would have.

"And speaking about this kind of stuff, Raven, what about you and Gar?"

I stopped writing and looked up at Vic, shocked. "What? Where did that come from?"

"You two are getting really serious, Raven, at least on his side. I just don't want to be unpleasantly surprised when you two get too serious and you bail."

I gaped at him. I couldn't believe that he just said that. Who did he think he freaking was... Where did he get off saying... How could he even assume...

"Look, Raven, the signs aren't exactly in your favor with this whole thing."

"What do you mean, 'the signs aren't in my favor'?" I demanded of him. I have to I was getting pretty pissed off and defensive. I mean really, who in the _hell _did he think he was thinking that I didn't like Gar? Of course I liked him, I mean I'm the one who started the whole relationship, if I remember correctly, which I do.

Was he talking to Gar about this?

"I mean that you can kind of be a commitaphobe, Raven. Especially after all that crap with Malchior, people can tell that you kind of closed yourself off. You never were very comfortable with Malchior anyway. And your relationship after Malchior with that goth kid," at this I rolled my eyes. He and Gar refused to learn 'Goth Boy's' name, which at the time irritated me to no end. "As soon as he wanted things to get serious you bailed on him. You freaked out and broke up with him when he told you he loved you. Don't deny, Raven, because we both know it's true. I just don't want that to happen with Gar."

"Things are totally different with Gar! Totally different," I repeat, because I'm not exactly sure what to say. This conversation is just getting more and more strange. How can he bring those things up and wave them in front of my face.

"How?" Vic asks skeptically, raising an eyebrow. When I open my mouth to protest he rushes on. "Look, I'm just asking these things because Gar's my best friend. Maybe I'm just sticking in my big nose where it doesn't belong, but I don't want to see him get crushed. He likes you, probably more than you realize."

I open my mouth, and then close it again, simply because I don't know what to say. This isn't ending the way that I thought it would.

Were things getting more serious? I couldn't tell. I mean my... affections for him were growing, but it wasn't as if the _l_-word, or something like that was happening.

It wasn't, was it?

..O..

After than conversation with Vic I began watching Gar for the signs of the dreaded _l_-word, or anything of the like, but nothing like that had ever shown. With 'Goth Boy', as he had been dubbed, began falling in love with me, there were specific signs.

It was little things like, he always used to by me that bottled tea from the store every time that we would go out on a date and he'd give it to me.

Or it was big things, like he bought me jewelery or he began wanting to be with me _all the time. _I abhor people that are clingy. It annoys me to no end.

But as I searched and searched I couldn't find any. No matter how hard I tried or how long I looked the same result came up; nothing.

When I did this I think that it was obvious, because Vic began giving me loaded looks, and I would immediately stop despite myself.

The only thing that I could think of was the whole door opening thing, but he had done that before we had gone out back when all we were was friends, so I was sure that it didn't mean anything.

**A/N: Well, I hope you enjoyed. This time it wasn't such a filler, and I'm proud of myself. This story is now over halfway over! I'm planning on it having twenty chapters, not including the prologue, or epilogue (I'm still debating on whether or not to add it, but I'm pretty sure that I will) and we are now at the eleventh chapter. I'm going to be so sad when this story is over. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, though. **


	13. Chapter Twelve

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Teen Titans. I don't know what I'd do if I did. Probably be really stressed out all the time because Lord knows that's a lot of work. **

_Philophobia _

_Chapter Twelve _

"Raven! Raven!" I turn around trying to see who's yelling my name, and I'm going to scowl at them. People's heads whip around trying to see who I am. It's Gar, though, and for some reason a big smile grows on my face instead of the glare that I had been preparing for. It's like a reflex, this smile. I don't even have to think about it, my face relaxes on its own.

"Yes?" I ask.

"Have you seen this?" He shoves a bright yellow flyer under my nose and I read it before wrinkling my nose.

"Seriously, Gar? Why do you think that I would want to go to _that_?" I quickly drop the crumpled flyer on the floor before it can contaminate me with its... icky-ness. Such a second grade word, but so true. Or, even worse, people might actually see me looking at it and get the wrong idea.

"What? Do you mean to say that you wouldn't ask me?" he fake pouts.

"No. I wouldn't ask you." Before he can say something I cut in. "I wouldn't ask you because I wouldn't be going to this myself."

"But why not?"

"Gar. It's a Sadie Hawkins dance. No. I'm sorry, but no."

"It's just a _dance_, Raven. It's not like everyone there is going to shove bamboo splinters under your nails or something. C'mon. For me?"

"No! I don't want to go. You can go if you want to. I wouldn't care."

"Please, Raven? Please?" Gar gives me his puppy dog look.

"No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. N-O. In the English and the Spanish language that word is a refusal. I'm not going and that's final. Maybe Vic can ask you."

Gar gives me a scathing look before snorting. "Please?" he kisses my neck. "Please?" he kisses the other side. Shivers run up and down my spine. I love how he can do that.

"Gar, we're going to get caught for PDA," I say, pleased that my voice seems to be even and calm while my insides are like Jell-o.

"So say yes, and I'll stop." He kisses my forehead. I smack him. I don't want to be sent back to ISS.

"Am I going to have to start speaking Japanese? No!"

"Please? I'll never ask you for anything ever again."

"That's a lie. You ask something of me everyday. My patience."

"That was mean. C'mon, it's one night. Think about it, us, under the glow in the dark stars that will be stuck on the gym ceiling. The thin see through maroon streamers that will be hanging all around because the school is too cheap to buy new ones so that the decorating committee has to use the ones from Homecoming. The juice that you and I won't drink because we both know that it's going to be spiked. You wearing a skirt, maybe, and me in khakis and a pretty nice shirt. Picture it." He looks off into the distance, play acting. I roll my eyes. He's freaking ridiculous.

"While that all sounds very tantalizing, no. I think not."

"Kori and Dick are going!"

"So? I bet they'd enjoy themselves. Kori enjoys that kind of thing, and I'm pretty sure that Dick does too. Well, he's used to them, at the very least," I muse. They go to dances every time that our school has them, I think. I've only been to one, and Kori had dragged me to it, practically blackmailing me to come. I have refused point blank to attend one since, and here I was having to plead my case against them.

"Please? Please, please, please, please, please, please, please?" He gives me the 'look' again, the one that makes it seem like I've just mortally offended him. God. I hate it when he does this. He's so good at it, even though I know that he's most probably lying.

"No," I say, but this time my resolve is obviously shaky. He senses weakness and pounces.

"Please? You know you want to say yes. You really, really do. "

I pause. I really can't I'm about to say this, but "Yes. Fine. I'll go. God, you're so aggravating, you know?" I'm exasperated. He's really too persistent for his own good.

He grins widely. "Yes, I do. Thanks for this, by the way. You rock. I promise you won't regret it." He gives me a peck on the lips before rushing to his next class. I shake my head. What was all that about?

..O..

Kori actually came to me about my paper for English. I guess Dick had told her, but when she approached me you could have knocked me over with a feather.

"Raven?" she approached me in our health class, and I looked up in surprise. I was writing down Dick's and Vic's stuff because we weren't doing anything in Health right now.

"Yes?" I asked, looking up.

"Um, are you going to do the interviewing of me? I would enjoy it immensely."

"Sure." I hadn't excepted her to come up to me. I actually was planning on asking her and my mother the same day, but if she wanted to go now, she could go. I could ask my mother another day.

"So, um what do you think it is? Romantic love, I mean." I gathered up a piece of notebook paper and a pencil ready for what she was going to say.

"I think that it is about having strength above everything else. I mean it would be a lot easier to hide your heart from the world and pull back and not give it up. Because, when you love someone, it does not matter who it is, but when you really truly and honestly love someone you have to give away part of yourself too."

Was it just me, or was Kori giving me a knowing look? I'm pretty sure that she was giving me a _really _knowing look. What was _with _my friends lately? Do they have some kind of conspiracy theory going on where they all know that I'm going to break up with Gar, which will eventually end up to my need of world domination or something?

Was I honestly that bad? Did all of my friends really believe that I was heartless enough to break up with Gar any time soon? Did they all think that I wasn't capable of love?

Are they right? Most of the time my friends are pretty spot on? And why was the thought of giving myself to Gar, not in the freaky physical way, but in the I-Really-Love-You way scaring me so much? Would it be so hard to give it up? Was my heart so firmly wedged in my chest that not even one of the best people I know, Garfield Logan, was able to get it out?

But I couldn't just _give _him my heart. What if he didn't want it anymore? What if he never wanted it at all? What if things don't work out? What then? What would I have to say for myself. The dreaded words _I told you so _would ring in my ears night and day then. There would be no peace from them.

It was just so much easier to shield myself away from the heart ache and suffering. I never want to go through that again. It was hard enough the first time. So what if I put up a few protections and fire walls around my heart... around me? As long as it kept me safe from the outside world and no one could get to me did that really matter? I was happy, being safe and sound.

I mean yes, occasionally someone would get through my defenses, more likely than not stabbing them with the force of their personality or through the way that they weakened due to my affections for those people, but other than those lucky few no one got in. I wouldn't let them.

But if no one got in how on earth did they ever get out?

I swallowed hard, throwing these thoughts into a closet that they would never come out of. I would lock them up and throw away the key into a really big compost pit of regret that I never wanted to dig through. I didn't want to plant the seed of doubt into my head, into my heart. It might never come out, then.

I looked back up to Kori and wrote down, _stregnth_. "Any thing else?" I hear myself asking, but it sounds as if I'm talking from very far away. It's like I'm not in totally present anymore.

"Um, friend Raven, are you the all right?"

"What? Of course I am. Nope, there's nothing to worry about. Nothing at all..."

"Are you sure?" Kori tilted her head. "You do not look well at all, and you are beginning to sweat. A lot."

"Um, bathroom. I need to throw up. Now." I push past Kori in my haste to get to the door. What on earth is wrong with me?

**A/N: Okay, to my fellow authors, have your little asterisks and things like that been going missing from your stories lately? They have on mine, and it's really making me mad, because I'm way to lazy to have to go through all my stories. But it makes it weird to look at too, so I'll have to fix it. Thankfully I've found a new little thing, though. But anyway, has this been happening to anyone else? **

**And yes, I know, short, but I'll try to make it up to you not the next chapter, but the one after that. Scout's honor. Sort of. **


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**Disclaimer: Teen Titans belongs to DC Comics and all of its affiliates. End of story.**

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Thirteen_

The dreaded dance was next week. I was still digging my heels in the sand about going, but Gar refused to let me not go. He told me it would be a waste of the high school experience or something ridiculous like that.

That's Gar in a nutshell, _so _ridiculous, but so great. Really, I don't know what I would do without him. I've been having my doubts about him, of course, but they've gone away slowly. And I'm glad. I would hate for Vic to be proved right.

If there's one thing that I'm good at, it's proving people wrong.

..O..

It was finally my mother's turn to be interviewed, and to be quite honest this was the interview that I was looking forward to the least. My mother's perspective of love is probably sick and twisted, and I really don't want to know what it is.

But when I asked her she seemed surprised. "Me? You want to ask _me _of all people? What's this for again?"

I sighed. "This is for English class mom. I'm doing a project, it's due in a month in and a half and I want to get it over with now, and I need to learn what you think romantic love is."

"Romantic love? Hmm..." she pondered, staring out the window pulling one leg underneath her body. "I don't really know, actually."

Well this interview has been the best one yet! Not. I breathed in my mouth and then out my nose trying not to say anything. "Okay. Thanks," I was going to get up to leave when she grabbed my wrist.

"Hang on. I'm not done. I was just saying that I don't know because romantic love, really, isn't exactly something that can be shoved in a box and hidden in a closet, you know?"

I sit back down. Okay, she's giving me things that I can work with here. This is a good thing, a very good thing. My mother has had more romantic love (well, if you can really call it love) than anyone that I've ever known. Three failed marriages and many, many failed relationships tends to do that to people. She can give me her take on it, and then I can finally be done.

Sort of. After I finish writing it and turn it in I'll officially be done.

"Yeah, I guess," I tell her, and she looks up at me worriedly.

"How are things with you and Gar going anyway?" she asked.

"Fantastic." For once I wasn't being a smart aleck; I was talling the truth. Things with him were going 'fantastic', sometimes too fantastic. He really was one of the best boyfriends I've ever had. And he hasn't cheated on my yet, which is a plus.

My mother smiled. "That's good, I'm glad."

She probably thought that we were 'talking'. Well this wasn't talking, not the kind that she thought that we were having. We never talk like that, ever. I don't remember the last time that happened, and that's probably because it never has. Not seriously anyway. Not since I was a kid.

"Mom, back to the topic of discussion," I ordered. Sometimes her tendencies towards randomness (which, evidently is supposed to be the sign of an _artiste_) really annoyed the crap out of me. I like order and straight lines.

"Oh, right." Her blue eyes focused again. I bet she was reminiscing. On what, I don't know, but nonetheless she probably was. "Okay, Raven, I'm not really sure. I think 'romantic love' is really about loving every part of someone. You can't pick and choose who you fall in love with. And when you're in love with someone, truly in love with someone, you can't just say 'I only love your sense of humor, your charm, and you selflessness' you know? You have to love every part of someone, even the bad parts."

I frowned while I wrote this down. People were surprising me with these answers. I didn't think that my mother, the woman that used alcohol as an escape from the harsh realities of the world (or so I'm told), would actually be able to except the flaws of the people she loved. I would think that she just simply ignored them.

"But isn't it the bad stuff that made you divorce all those men?" I asked. From what I can recall, this was true. I remember Ryan (my mother's true love number five hundred and seventy eight as well as husband number two) had this really bad habit of leaving his trash _everywhere _(which is absolutely disgusting, by the way) which eventually led to his leaving his girlfriend's thongs everywhere, which led to divorce. And that's not even a good example.

My mother looked affronted. "No, that's not why. Raven, those men just weren't right for me, or I wasn't right for them. We all have one person that we're supposed to be with forever, and I just haven't found him yet. Besides, when you have forever with somebody think about all of the bad things that you will learn about them."

Forever is such an awfully long time. I have never thought about that before, but it was true. How could anyone actually _want _to stay with someone forever? I mean, I had heard of those old people that had fallen in love when they were, like, twelve and had stayed married until one of them died tragically at the age of eighty five, but I just couldn't wrap my head about that kind of devotion. But evidently my mother could. She craved it the way that dieting people crave chocolate.

That didn't explain why she didn't want to marry Kevin. If she wanted that forever kind of love why not try it with him? She had tried it with plenty of others...

"Why don't you want to marry Kevin?" I asked suddenly; quite some time had passed between my asking this question and me writing down her answer.

She looked startled, like she hadn't been expecting that question. I wasn't either, though, so I didn't have room to talk. The my mother sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, which was a habit that I also had when I didn't particularly want to answer something. It was amazing how alike we were if you looked closely enough.

"Honestly, Raven, I just don't _want _to. I don't want to ruin something that works so well for the both of us," she patted her protruding stomach absentmindedly, biting the inside of her cheek as she thought about this.

"You're already having his kid. What's the point of waiting."

"Marriage is just so _exhausting_, you know that. You've seen plenty of them." I had. "Besides, even though Kevin thinks that it is 'the right thing to do' is it really, for us? I don't think so. When I got pregnant you know that we hadn't even been dating that long. For me at least our relationship was purely physical." Eww. That's disgusting. I did not need to know that. But my mother didn't notice my discomfort and she went on talking.

"But now that I'm having Melvin..."

"Melvin?"

"Oh! Didn't I tell you? I decided on a name. She's going to be Melvin. If it's a boy I'm thinking Timothy, like my father. But I'm pretty sure it's a girl."

"How do you know?"

She smiled gently, her eyes getting a far away look. Sometimes talking with my mother drove me crazy because more often than not she had one foot in the real world and one foot in her head. Normally I didn't have this problem (because, lately, things had either been intense between us or she was complaining) with her, but when we were having a normal conversation, like this one, she would get lost in the clouds. So annoying.

"The same way I knew with you, Raven. I just do," she squeezed my hand.

I felt dumbfounded. I had never thought about what it was like for my mother when I wasn't on the planet yet. I had been so worried about the past that I _was _here for that I didn't want to think of a time before myself.

"But anyway, I just don't think I _love _Kevin yet. Not in the way that he loves me. And marriage has to be built on love. And good sex." She smiled at me, and I gave the expected laugh.

****

A/N: I _know! _I suck! Majorly! And I'm sorry. I know that doesn't make up for anything, but if I tell you that it's not just for you guys. In some of my other stories I'm supposed to be writing a sequel to a one shot and I just can't make myself do it. Maybe I'm becoming a commitaphobe lately when it comes to fanfiction or something, but I am sorry. The next chapter should be up soon, I hope! I think it will be, because there's lots of drama, and so I'll be more engaged in the story!

I'm sorry for the wait!

-RFE


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. Sorry if you thought I did. **

_Philophobia _

_Chapter Fourteen_

The dance was today. I have to say that I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. At all. But I _had _promised, and I loath people that don't keep their promises, so I didn't want to turn into one of those unhonest people.

So I had to go. Yay.

Gar was coming to pick me up at six which was the time that the dance began. We were all going to be 'fashionably late' or something. Everyone was coming.

Even Vic had a date, with some girl named Sarah. We had never met her before- she went to a different school- but we all wanted to. Every time one of us asked about her Vic just blushed (Vic actually blushed! Would wonders never cease? He must really like this girl) and said that we'd meet her when we'd meet her. I took this as a good sign.

Gar was actually more excited with the dance than I was. I knew that in a normal relationship that things should be the other way around, but since when had we ever been normal? Never, I intelligently concluded.

But Gar was really enthusiastic about the dance. He kept saying how tonight was going to be 'really special' and a lot of other stuff, but I was still kind of wary about it. How can probably at least a hundred teenagers locked in a gym be considered special? I knew that he would probably keep his word, so I decided to believe him for the most part.

It was four o' clock and I was sitting on my bed trying decide what to wear (no dresses, a skirt was a possibility, and I didn't think that pants would be appropriate as much as I was longing to wear them) when Kori came, armed to the nines with make up of all sorts, a straightener and curling iron, and her own dress. I couldn't believe that my mother actually let her inside the apartment.

"No complaining Raven," Kori stated before I could even open my mouth. She was all business. "This is one of the few times that I am actually allowed to get you 'girly' so you are going to let me. I do not do the complaining ordinarily, but you must allow for me to do this tonight. Okay?" Kori narrowed her eyes at me. I rolled mine. When Kori was serious enough about something she could be extremely scary. Especially when it came to her temper. But I couldn't believe that she thought that I was going to be difficult! I wasn't that bad, was I...?

"Fine," I sighed, knowing that there really was not going to be any other way for me.

Kori squealed. "I was doing the hoping that you would say that! What are you wearing?" I shrugged. Kori looked comically shocked. "Let us see what you have in your closet, friend Raven," she told me, opening my closet doors with a flourish.

..O..

One and a half long hours later our work was finally complete. Well hers was, I didn't really do anything except sit there and wonder when the heck that it was going to be over with.

Gar had called about four thirty telling me that he wouldn't be able to pick me up because his car had a flat tire and that Steve and Rita were going out tonight so he wouldn't be able to borrow their car.

"Do you want me to pick you up?" I asked, making sure that the phone antenna didn't screw up the delicate hair style Kori was attempting to put on the top of my head before she eventually gave up in earnest and decided just to curl it instead.

"No, I'm going to get a ride with Vic. Evidently Sarah has the flu and can't come, but she wants him to be with his friends." Gar paused before groaning. "Ugh, things just aren't going like I planned tonight." He sounded extremely frustrated. I wondered what that was all about.

"Sorry, anything that I can do?"

"Nope," he said dejectedly. "See you there."

But now I was just ready to go. "Thanks for coming over and doing this, Kori. It was actually kind of fun." I was surprised to say that I wasn't lying. It had been nice to have some girl time with Kori. We hadn't had any for a very long time, and it was nice to have Kori to hang out with. She was actually one of my closest friends.

"It was not a problem," she said calmly, putting all of her brushes and bottles and the like into the large bag that she had brought. She smiled her dazzling smile at me. It never failed to amaze me to see how pretty she really was, inside and out. "I actually had an enjoyable time. I had thought that you were going to be horrible."

"I'm not that bad Kori!" She looked at me doubtfully. "Okay, maybe I am, just a little, but that's not really a bad thing, is it?" Kori laughed and hugged me.

"No, it's not," she agreed as I tried to pull away. I'm still not a fan of contact.

"It's time for pictures, girls," my mother trilled, pulling out her camera. I groaned. "Yes, Raven, you're taking them. It's the first time I'll ever be able to take pictures of you for a dance. So no complaining. Is Gar coming?"

"No, he's not. Let's just get this over with." My mother laughed at my tortured expression.

"I promise that it's not going to be that bad, Raven."

"Whatever."

We smiled at the camera and struck a few poses before we were (finally!) done. "Thank God that's over with," I mumbled after Kori had left to go back to her own home. Dick was going to pick her up there, and then the two of them were going to the dance together.

As I drove away from the apartment building I saw Garth and I waved at him and watched him wave back.

Then I was suddenly at the school, a bit to fast for my liking. It was almost like time wanted to move faster so that I _had_ to go to this stupid dance. My even contemplating to go to this thing was a sign of how much I liked Gar- and here I was actually dressed up (in a skirt!) and at the gym. God, something is wrong with me.

I frowned just thinking about that and then looked up, startled, to see Gar tapping at my glass. He smiled at my expression and then gestured for me to get out of my car. When I got out he kissed me lightly and then said, "You came! Oh my gosh." He sounded jokingly shocked.

"Shut up. Of course I was going to come. You were practically groveling at my feet."

"I was not!"

"You so were."

"I was not," he repeated.

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever you say, Gar. Whatever you say."

"Let's just get inside before you run away or something."

"Oh hardy har har," I replied as he took my hand.

As we walked in the door it was just as I had imagined it would be, horrible. The decorations all over the world looked as someone had tried really hard to make them look good, but they failed miserably. There were streamers all over the ceiling, and a long table full of food and punch that I was pretty sure was already spiked. But then again what did I know? Oh no, I am pretty sure that it was now, considering someone just pored something out of a bottle into it. Wow, people don't have an subtlety these days.

I just shook my head and sighed. "What?" Gar asked, looking around.

"Look, over there," I nodded to the kid that was still pouring the bottle into the punch bowl. The teachers either were very not observant or they wanted some of that punch too. I was personally leaning towards the latter.

"You know, when I'm with you I notice the little things. I like that," Gar said casually and then he looked at me. I could feel my heart rate speed up. He leaned in to kiss me and then I could feel a hand on my shoulder.

"Hey guys," Vic said, grinning. He knew he had just ruined a moment, and he was enjoying himself.

"Damn it, Vic," Gar said, glaring at him. Vic just laughed.

"C'mon, let's go meet Dick and Kori. The dancing is about to start."

"Yay," I muttered under my breath. Vic laughed at me.

"It's not as bad as you make it out to be. Try to enjoy yourself," Vic said. I rolled my eyes again. I seemed to be doing that a lot tonight.

"I'm just insinuating that this is a stupid reason for people to get together."

"Most people actually like these sorts of things, actually," Vic replied, grinning.

"Yes, well, I'm not most people."

"Don't we all know that."

I punched him lightly. Well, maybe kind of hard. Either way I punched him. "Ouch! Gar, aren't you going to protect me from your girlfriend?"

"No," Gar said, laughing. "If Raven can punch you hard enough to make you say ouch then something's wrong."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Oh nothing, nothing at all," he told me. "Hey, want to dance?"

"Are you trying to distract me?"

"Yes, yes I am, and I am not ashamed."

"Fine."

Several dances later Gar told me, "Hey, try to at least look like you're having fun."

"But I am having fun!" Gar raised his eyebrows at me. "Okay, fine. I'll try not to act so tortured."

"I know it's going to be hard for you," Gar told me solemnly. "Hey, let's sit down. For a minute."

"Thank God."

"Raven," he sent me an despairing look.

"Fine."

"Hey," he said, pulling out my seat and then he sat down too, "how about after this you come over? I have something to tell you." He looked positively ecstatic as he thought this up. There was a bright gleam in his eye.

"Really?" I told him, leaning closer to him. "What? Why can't you tell me now?"

"It's a surprise."

"I hate surprises."

"Sometimes I think that you hate everything."

"Maybe I do."

"Hey, what are you two talking about?" Dick asked, sitting down and adjusting his tie to make it looser. He and Kori had been dancing practically the whole time and he was probably exhausted. I would have been.

"About how much Raven hates everything," Gar replied without missing a beat.

Dick laughed as Kori came and sat down beside him.

The rest of the night went by in a blur of dancing, laughter, and people watching. Actually, when I stopped trying to make everything seem worse than it really was (because, as I grudgingly admitted to myself, and no one else, things really weren't all that bad) I actually had a semi enjoyable time. I mean all of the people and the loud music sometimes got on my nerves, but when I stopped paying so much attention on everyone else and started focusing on my friends and Gar I could actually find something fun about the evening.

For example the dancing wasn't that bad. With Gar I refused to dance fast with him (Because, honestly, he's embarrassing because he totally doesn't care how stupid he looks and he really gets into it. And I mean _gets _into it.) but whenever we slow danced things were actually enjoyable. I would say that the dances were actually kind of romantic and sweet, if I was that type of girl. Dick and I danced a few times, but really he was far too interested with dancing with Kori to dance much with me. Dick actually looked _cool _dancing, just like he looks cool doing anything. Vic and I danced the faster songs, but by dancing I really mean Vic swinging me around so much that I eventually got so dizzy and giggly that I almost puked all over him. And no one ever had any of the punch.

Gar and Vic left early. Gar because he 'really wanted to get things ready before I got there', whatever that was supposed to mean, and Vic because he wanted to check in on Sarah again. I thought that was really sweet of Vic, so off they went about an early before the dance ended.

I decided to stay until the dance was over, partly because I wanted to stay with Dick and Kori, and partly because I wanted Gar to have plenty of time to 'get things ready.'

But thirty minutes before the dance was over I decided that Gar had enough time and I just really wanted to go see him. "Hey guys," I told Dick and Kori, who were both sitting down and having a break, "I really want to go now."

Dick looked at Kori and they wordlessly communicated in that way that they often do and Dick said, "We're gonna go too. Kori has something to do tomorrow early."

As we walked out into the parking lot Kori said, "Did you have fun, Raven?" as she twirled around which made her purple dress flare out.

"Surprisingly, yes, I did. And I'm not ashamed to admit it."

Dick slid his hands into his pockets and raised his eyebrows. "Wow. That's, like, life changing for you, Raven. Gar's really got you good, hasn't he?"

"What are you talking about?"

Dick shrugged. "You might not have noticed it, but ever since you realized that you had feelings for him you've changed, Raven. And for the better, I think. You're not nearly as cold anymore, nor as introverted and snappish. You actually seem to enjoy the little things in life a lot more too."

"I have noticed it too, Raven," Kori supplied. "And it is wonderful, the things love can do to you." She looked at Dick shyly as she said this.

Wait. _What? _I decided that not acting like what they said bothered me was the best way to go. "Um, yeah. Well, I've got to go meet Gar. He's expecting me." I walked over to my car, opened the door, and got in, my mind racing.

"Yeah, have fun." Dick raised his hand into a wave and Kori smiled at me brightly.

I went off driving into the street not really paying attention.

Then all of a sudden I saw a bright light, felt intense pain, and then the whole world went black.

**A/N: What's this? Did RFE actually update in a decent time frame? Yes, she did! Call the government, the apocalypse is happening! Sorry for the cliff hanger, but really, it's going to be fun reading you guy's reactions. Lots of drama planned after this! **


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. There, I admitted it. Now you can't sue me. Ha!**

_Philophobia _

_Chapter Fifteen_

When I opened my eyes things were groggy and unclear. I couldn't tell what was going on, I didn't know where I was, and I didn't know who the people were that were rushing around me. I heard someone scream, "Call 911!" in a voice that sounded familiar, but I couldn't tell who it was exactly.

My leg felt like it was shattered into a million pieces and I wanted to cry out but I realized that I couldn't make myself do so. There was a gash in my side that seemed to be bleeding rather badly, or at least I could feel a slick and warm liquid traveling down my side. My head was throbbing and in my right eye there was some sort of liquid covering it so I couldn't see out of it that well.

This was all that I could tell was going on. Then I blacked out again.

The second time I woke up I could see people that were in close proximity to me. I could feel like we were moving and this time things hurt slightly less even though things were still slightly unclear. But instead of things being indistinguishable I was able to tell were I was. Things were slowly becoming clearer, and that was a good thing, I thought.

"She's going to need some more pain meds soon, what we got in her isn't enough to last very long," a dark haired man above me said. I didn't think that I had ever seen him before. Then he noticed that I was awake and looked startled.

"Hi. Raven. Do you know what happened to you?" he asked kindly. I was surprised that he knew my name, but maybe someone had told him my name.

"Ugh," I groaned. "Car, light, pain," was the only thing that I could say. But my sense of speech seemed to be coming back, along with the pain. The medication really was wearing off.

"Okay, at least we know your head trauma isn't that bad," he said to me, but mostly for his own benefit I think. "You're going to need some stitches. Also, your leg is broken and you're going to be in crutches. Were you drinking?"

"No." I tried to explain that I didn't drink but I felt like I was too exhausted to do so. What would be the point? There really wasn't one. My head was slowly coming back to me, however disoriented I still was (plus the drugs they pumped into me) but I grasped that they would have some sort of test to tell that I was telling the truth.

"That's good," the man said, slightly before we stopped moving completely. They then made the cot that I was lying in move and I got jostled around before being rushed into the ER with people shouting things and firing all sorts of questions at each other.

I couldn't tell what was going on, nor did I really care. I could feel some of the pain coming back and I was far too busy focusing on that instead.

I watched as people in white did things over me, as they stuck a needle into my arm, and as they worked on me, but it didn't really feel like I was there. It was almost like an out of body experience of sorts, but I wasn't watching myself from above. More like I was just... vacant and yet I could tell that I was still alive. Later, when I tried to explain it to people I just couldn't. It's just one of those things that you have to experience and that cannot be described.

Then I felt myself come to a complete stop and someone checked the IV bag and I came back into my body again. There was no pain now, only numbness, and it was a peculiar sensation but I could tell that I was becoming myself again.

I closed my eyes one moment before I could hear Kori saying, "Oh, thank X'Hal she is alright," before she sighed.

"She's not alright," a voice that I could tell was Dick's replied, "but at least she's alive. It was fucking scary seeing the way the car smashed into her like that."

"I'll bet. At times like these it's just so convenient that you're Bruce Wayne's ward. We wouldn't have been able to get in here without your connections." Vic said just before I opened my eyes. When I did they all looked startled. I began looking around for someone else.

"Yeah, well I hope that they let Gar in. He's already freaking," Dick said grimly.

"Gar?" I asked, my voice shriller than usual. The drugs and my fear and pain were beginning to get to me. "Gar? Where is he? Why isn't he here?" I demanded. "Why?" I asked again when no one answered me. They didn't seem to know what to say.

Why wasn't he here? I couldn't understand it; everyone else was here. Could he not be bothered or something? My heart monitor began beeping as my heart started beating faster, faster than normal. But then I felt someone grab my hand.

"It's okay," Gar soothed, rubbing his thumb in soothing circles on my hand. "I'm here. Everything's going to be alright."

At this the dam burst and I began to cry, for the first time in a long time. "Oh my God, I thought I was going to die," I blubbered, grasping Gar's hand for dear life. His grip tightened on mine, and with that all of the fears I had been holding in just spilled out.

"Shh..." Gar told me. "Shh..."

I tried to calm down. I did, but then I heard my mother's voice above Gar's. "Raven? Oh Raven, oh honey," she told me as she pushed Gar out of the way and Gar let go of my hand. I panicked, not wanting to let him go, but my mother completely took over the space that he had just occupied.

"I've got to go, Raven," he told me over my mother's shoulder, his voice still calm, but I had known him for years and I knew that he was trying to cover up something, most probably a kind of emotion, and he wasn't doing that good of a job. "But I'll be back. Promise."

Suddenly Gar seemed like he was the only person in the world, even though there were four other people in the room with me. "Do you promise? Really?" I asked desperately. "You can't tell me that and then not come! Gar, swear on it!"

"I swear to God that I'll be back. Really. I'll try to come as soon as you can take visitors. Maybe before that, if I can manage it."

"Okay," I relaxed. I could tell that he meant it.

"Oh, Raven!" my mother exclaimed, and then she suddenly began sobbing loudly. I wasn't sure what to do, I was still crying my own tears, but not ones to this magnitude. "I," she hiccuped, trying to speak through her tears, "was _hic _so _hiccup _scared! I _hiccup _thought that _hic _we were going to _hiccup hiccup _lose you. Oh baby, don't ever do anything like this to me again."

By this time the drugs were doing their job, and well. I couldn't feel a thing when I answered, "I promise," and watched my mother smile through her tears.

..O..

When I woke up the first thing that I felt was a headache, and the first thing that I saw was my mother's face, staring at me. "Oh," she breathed, "you're up. Good. I'll just have to call the nurse and tell her that you're awake." She pushed the call button and waited.

"Do you remember what happened?" she asked. Why was everyone asking me that? I was pretty sure that I would remember a car ramming into me. Well, it was nice to know that I had my head back.

"Um, kind of. All I remember is headlights and I could see a car, and then pain. Lots of it."

She sighed and put her hand on her chest. "Oh baby. Oh my God. Do you have any idea how scared I was? When the hospital called me I thought that you were going to die. I was terrified. Were you drinking? I won't tell, and I won't be mad, I promise. The doctors wouldn't answer me when I asked him, he said that he couldn't tell me."

I felt the anger that was always right under the surface when I was with my mother bubble up. How could she even say that? She was just assuming things, like she always did. You know what happens when people assume things.

"No," I told her, my voice as sharp as a blade. This whole conversation was making my headache worse. "I was not drinking. I don't drink. You of all people should understand why that is."

"Rae Rae," she told me, her voice soft. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about that right now..." she was going to continue but my anger got the best of me and I wasn't about to let her finish. I couldn't believe that she would use my baby name now of all times. She hadn't called me that in years. Tears stung my eyes and I had to swallow hard.

"Do _not _call me that. You don't deserve to. And you know what, yeah, you are sorry. Don't pretend that you care now. Because you don't, Arella. You don't give a shit about me, and you never have. I know that now. All you care about is _you, you, you._ Well, you and your men, and maybe your art. That's it. You pretend to care when I almost die, but we both know that you don't. So just don't even bother trying to care. It's not worth it."

This was the most honest thing that I had told my mother in years. I couldn't believe that I was saying this (finally) but the words just left my lips without my brain telling them to, and I didn't even bother to stop them. It felt too good, like a weight that I had been lugging around for years had suddenly been lifted. It felt wonderful, to wonderful to stop, so I didn't.

"So why don't you just leave. Just go to Kevin, pay for the hospital visit, and we can both go back to how things are supposed to be. Then I leave to college and you'll never see me again. And then we'll both be happier, I promise."

Several emotions crossed over my mother's face. First shock, and then anger, then sadness, and right back to shock again. It was interesting, but not as interesting as what I was saying.

After I found that I didn't have anymore words I stopped, and she said coolly "Where is the nurse?" I found myself feeling incredulous. She didn't have anything to say to that? She was just going to take that?

Of course she was. Because it was true. Every single word of it. And she knew it. And I knew it. Hell, the whole world knew it, if they were paying attention. It was obvious that I was right and she was wrong. I love being right.

"I'm sorry that you feel that way," my mother told me after a moment of silence, lapsing back into the elegant and formal way that she talked when she lived with my grandfather. "I'm sorry that you have felt that way for so many years. This isn't recent, is it?"

"No, it's not," I told her. "Believe me, it's not. It all started when you became a drunk. Because you were, plain and simple. You just stopped caring about anyone about yourself. You abanded me. I was a little girl, and you were my mother. You were supposed to take care of _me_. I wasn't supposed to have to take care of myself."

"No, you weren't." She began fiddling with the sheet on my bed and then she looked me straight in the eye. "Look, I know this might sound like an excuse, but it's not. Let me tell you everything, okay, before you judge me anymore."

I nodded. I wanted to hear what she had to say for herself, what excuses that she had made up so that she could have peace of mind. "I was seventeen when I got pregnant and soon after that I got kicked out of the house. I was left on my own. But I thought that I could do it. I thought that I could take care of you and me without any help from anything. I had been so independent, just like you are."

She paused, as if unsure of where to go after this. "So I turned eighteen and two months after I had you. I had been unprepared for parenthood, for everything that came with life. The hardest part of being a parent is knowing that now you have to put your children's happiness, and well beings, and dreams before your own. I wasn't ready for that. I didn't want to take care of a baby, I didn't want to have to work all the time so that I could support us. I wanted to paint, I wanted to go to Paris and have my art showcased for the whole world to see. I wanted people to see my paintings. But I couldn't do that, because I had you to take care of."

My mother grabbed my hand. "And I'm sorry that I let you down. I'm sorry that it took me so long to say this. I'm sorry that I hurt you by drinking, but I couldn't handle the responsibility, and drinking was a way away from that."

She began crying then. "And then I watched you grow angry and resentful and I watched you put up those walls that you used to keep everyone out. I knew what I was doing to you, but I didn't care. I just didn't care, so immersed in my self pity and so deep into the bottle. And then I got that opportunity from that man at the job interview. You were with me, do you remember that. You were with me when I opened the check. I remember watching your face as I opened the envelope and that day was the first time that I had been sober in so long. Do you remember?"

I did. I remembered that day, but for different reasons than she did. I remember that as the day she got her act together all for her painting. I nodded.

"I watched your face as I opened the money, and the expression that I saw there made me realize what I had done to you, what I had done for us. And for the first time in a long time, I cared aboust something that was more than myself. So I became sober, for you. It was all for you, Raven."

I shook my head, because no, it _wasn't_. It wasn't. She just wanted it to be. But I could feel my resistance to her words crumbling. I was believing her. I was, but I didn't want to. Because she was being so earnest, so real. And because she was my mother. And I loved her. I did, even through everything.

My mother was a woman of many faces and angles. There was Angela, the abused daughter of a frantic Christian who had been worried for her soul. There was Arella, the young mother, and A. Roth, the artist. There was Arella the lover, the mother, the painter, the liver of life. All of these people were my mother, and there was no denying that. She was my mother. Mom, Mommy, Mother.

"It was," she told me. "I know you don't believe me, but it was. I know I've made plenty of mistakes, especially recently, but I just want you to know that I apologize for everything. I'm not perfect, in fact I'm extremely flawed, but I hope that you can forgive me. Can you? Please?"

I felt myself trying to resist, but as I read the open honesty of her face I found that I couldn't do it. And so I nodded, and I too began to cry.

That's how the nurse found us, crying together and clutching one another for dear life.

**A/N: Hello. I was going to just leave this alone and let the mood soak in but I have an announcement to make. THIS STORY HAS OVER 100 REVIEWS! Holy S*** you guys! Okay, so I have a present for all y'all. How would you like me to write this chapter... but in Gar's POV has a one shot? I mean, some of it will be repeated (like their conversation and stuff) but I still think that it'd be fun. And it's a gift! **

**So tell me if you'd like that in a review! It's gonna be fun.**

**Thanks so much everyone!**

**Love,**

**RFE**


	17. Chapter Sixteen

**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone seen here. God I hate writing these things. Maybe I should stop. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Sixteen_

The damage that was done to me, thanks to a driver that decided to have just a bit too much of the happy juice (yes, I realize that my life is just one big irony fest), goes as follows:

1. Three stitches along my hairline.

2. Thirty two stitches in my right side (evidently I lost a lot of blood and that this tore into my ribs somewhat).

3. A broken leg.

Really I've gotten off lucky. Or at least that's what the doctor says. _I _don't think that I'm so lucky. I have to take these gigantic pain killers and the one time I didn't take them the pain was so bad that I just about cried.

And the crutches. Oh God, the crutches. I hate those SOB's. I hate them I hate them I hate them. They're annoying and they hurt my armpits and as soon as I can get a boot I'm getting it. I can't stand them (as I have now said about a thousand times)!

But the worst part is probably that now I need some help getting around. Mom has helped, of course, but it's like she said. I'm independent and I don't want help from anybody. Not even my own mother.

They make me feel like an invalid and that I shouldn't have been so stupid.

God I hate this.

..O..

I'm on a cliff and below the cliff there's water. I can hear the waves gently lapping at the rock below. There is wind on the top and it's playing with my hair. I can smell the rich scent of earth and the grass beneath my feet is soft. I wiggle my toes in it and relish the fact that it doesn't pain me to do so. I'm wearing a bikini, which is something that I would have never have done before, but it felt right to be like this.

I glance down at my side and realize that there's no scar like the doctor said there would be. Tentatively I reach my hand up to my hairline and don't feel the raised skin of a scar there either. The stitches must have really done their job.

"Raven!" I hear someone call down below me. I can't tell who it is from right here but it sounds awfully familiar. I must have heard this voice say millions of different words, thousands of different phrases, hundreds of different sentences. I would know this voice out of a crowd. But I can't tell who it is exactly.

I lean over the side of the cliff and look down to see Gar treading in the beautifully blue water. It's just as pretty down there as it is up on the cliff. "C'mon, Raven!" Gar called again. He looked so beautiful down there, his blonde hair shining and a smile wide across his face, that it made my heart hurt. I wanted to go join him.

But suddenly I felt afraid. It was a long way down and there was only one way to go. I could go back down the cliff because that option was suddenly blocked off to me. "The water's great. I'm sure that you're going to want to join me."

Gar begins floating on his back, that lazy smile gracing his face. I feel myself smiling back even through my fear. "Aren't you going to come down?"

"No," I said suddenly, shaking slightly. There were rocks down there and God only knows what kind of fish. Aren't there such things as land sharks? I don't want to ever find out. "I don't think so."

"Oh come _on_. You know you want to. Look, it's beautiful."

"But what if I get hurt? What if something happens to me? What if the fall is too far and I end up being permanently injured?"

"Don't you trust me? C'mon. Just fall. It's just as easy as jumping. I'll always be there to catch you."

"Promise?"

"Promise," he said reverently.

I took a deep breath. "Okay," I said and found myself running backwards before thrusting myself over the edge.

I wake up in a sweat and put my head in my hands. I had felt myself falling and it wasn't a pleasant sensation. I never found out if Gar had ended up catching me or not.

These drugs kept giving me freaky dreams. But soon I wouldn't have to take them anymore, or so the doctor said, because it was only my third day out of the hospital. They had only wanted to keep me overnight for observation and to make sure that I didn't have any head injuries.

I hadn't had any other than my stitches, of course (my head is too hard for anything to hurt it), and so I had been able to be released from the hospital. But Mom didn't want me to have any visitors so everyone except herself was banned from the house. She said that seeing them would just overexcite me, or something, and I actually had to agree with her at first.

But now I was getting antsy. I wanted out. I wanted to go places. Of course I had gotten hurt on a Friday and Mom wanted to keep me home for at least a week even though the doctors all said that it would be fine to let me go after just a few days.

Mom had been extremely protective over the past few days. She did almost everything that she could for me, in her current condition, and she barely let me get out of bed. She even helped me to the bathroom even though I really didn't need all that help all the time.

I was thankful for all the help (sometimes) and I was greatful even though I complained to her mostly. She just rolled her eyes at my protests though and ignored me the rest of the time.

But now I was restless. I didn't like staying in bed all the time. I longed to get out there and start walking again, to be able to go to school and to see my friends. I didn't like being cooped up in my room, which I really needed to redecorate because all of the dark and somber colors were beginning to get on my nerves.

I was contemplating what color to paint it (Dark blue, light blue, or turquoise blue? Ah the wide verity of colors...) when my mother suddenly burst into my room. Before our little scene in the hospital she wouldn't have dared to do this, but now she did it all the time, sadly. We would have to establish some ground rules when I healed fully.

"Your boot came in," she told me, holding a big cardboard box. It was a very hopeful looking sight. Finally. Freedom. "Oh, and Gar called. He's coming over today. He said that he needed to tell you something, so I allowed it. I hope that's alright with you."

"Yeah, of course it is," I said, my mouth suddenly growing dry. I started sweating again, a lot like how I felt when I woke up from the dream. I couldn't put my finger on what the feeling was exactly. It couldn't have been fear. I've seen Gar hundreds of time within the past five months. But that was the only feeling that I could even relate it to.

"Are you okay?" Mom looked at me doubtfully, as if she knew that something was going on.

"Yeah, of course it is," I repeated, and then I realized my error. "I mean, yes. Yes I am. I'm going to see my boyfriend, of course I'm fine. I'm more than fine, actually."

Mom looked at me for a long second before deciding to believe me and she smiled. "That's what I thought. He sounded really anxious to see you. I can imagine why," she said.

She sat at the edge of my bed. "You've never really talked to me about him. Is he a good boyfriend? Does he treat you right?"

"Of course he does Mom," I said without thinking, because the answer was just that clear to me. "He's amazing. He's funny, sometimes, and he's really sweet and he's nice to me. He carries my books and he doesn't mind listening to me. He's wonderful."

"Sounds like it. Is he a good kisser?"

"_Mom_!" I protested, my cheeks growing red. I couldn't believe that she just asked me that.

"What?" she shrugged. "I was just wondering."

"That's t-that's private information!" I sputtered, still throughly mortified.

"Like I said before, just wondering."

"Jesus! What would you do if I asked you that about Kevin? Not that I would ever ask that, but still! Ugh," I shuddered.

"I'd answer you truthfully."

There suddenly was a knock at the door. "That boy sure doesn't waste any time, does he?" My mother smiled. "I'll go get it. You can open your box so that you two can go take a walk around the apartment complex, okay?"

"Okay," I said again, my mouth running dry again. This time my stomach was filled with dread. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me? Was my body telling me something?

Why was I so afraid? It was just Gar. I had seen him before hundreds of times, and yet I had never felt like this before. Not even when we had first started dating. Usually I just felt comfortable with him.

Was my body trying to tell me something?

"Hey, Raven," Gar walked in and just seeing him made me sweat again. What was _wrong _with me? "Are you okay?"

Why was everyone asking me that? Did I look utterly crappy or something? "Just peachy," I said, my voice shaking. I shook my head. _Just act normal! _I screamed at myself.

"Need help with the box?" Gar asked. Huh. I hadn't even noticed that I was still clutching my boot.

"Yes please," I found myself saying, and Gar cut it open with a pocket knife. I hadn't known that he carried one of those around.

"Whoa, what's that for?" I asked. Maybe this was why I was freaking out. Maybe he was going to stab me. Now that's an idea.

"All those knife fights I get into. I have to have a blade on me just in case," he replied with a gentle smile.

"Seriously."

"Steve always thought that it would be a good idea, and I figured, what the heck? So now I carry them around all the time. Sometimes the scissors come in handy too." He showed me all of the gadgets that were within the pocket knife.

"Cool. Help me strap this thing on?" I asked, because it still hurt to bend over. I didn't like the sensation of my stitches pulling on my skin. It made me feel like a frigging rag doll that was just freshly sewn together.

"Course," he said, and he bent over helping me. I put a hand on his back, feeling his warmth. He felt very... alive.

"So..." he said, flipping the hair out of his eyes. "I bet that you're going to have a pretty wicked nasty scar."

"I bet so too." My hand automatically went to rest on all the stitches. "Want to see?"

Gar shrugged. "Sure."

As I began lifting up my shirt Gar put his hands over my face. "Whoa! Okay, I hadn't realized that they were that far up there. You don't have to show me, it's fine."

"Gar, honestly. It's not like I'm going to flash you or anything. It's not like you're going to be able to see much more than this." I didn't know why he was freaking so bad. We had gone farther than this on some nights. Maybe it's 'Act Freaky Around Your Significant Other Day'. I lifted up the rest of it until all he could see was my stomach and the stitches.

The sight was ugly, and I could tell that it was going to scar badly. The black thread was especially evident against my pale skin and it didn't look good. The skin around it was still red, and it was raised up. I had a few bruises around that area too, but those were now a yellowish blue color because they were fading.

Gar was looking at it slightly horrified and I could tell that he thought that the stitches were ugly too. I didn't blame him, because they were. They were disgusting. "Can I touch it?" he asked.

"Sure." Gar reached his hand out to my side and it hovered shortly in front of the ugly mess before he gently touched the area with his fingerprints. His touching me in this intimate way gave me goose bumps. It barely hurt.

He pulled his hand away after a minute and I brought my shirt down again. "Pretty bad, huh?" I asked and Gar grimaced slightly.

"I feel so guilty."

"What?" I asked. "Why? You shouldn't feel guilty. Not at all."

"If I had just not ran over that stupid nail. If I had asked Vic to fix the tire I would be the one with the stitches and the cast and the pain killers. Not you."

"I wouldn't want you to be in my place," I said solemnly. And then I joked, "Believe me, even though they say otherwise the drugs don't have many cool side effects."

"But still..." he trailed off, the pain evident in his eyes. I put my hand over his. I didn't like seeming him like this. He was supposed to be my happy boyfriend all the time, not this person that was consumed by grief. I had a feeling that this was reminding him of his parents, who had both died when he was a young child.

He had told me that he felt guilty for their deaths too, and that most of his humor was a defense against the world and his past, but my situation was totally different. For one thing I wasn't dead. For another it could have happened to anyone. And for a third thing I really didn't want it to have happened to him. I didn't know what I would do if I ever lost him like that...

The thought brought fear into my heart, and then another type of fear, a far deeper and sinister one came upon me. I didn't know where it came from, but it almost seemed like it came from my deep feelings for Gar.

I grabbed the hand that had touched my stitches. "Look, Gar, I know you might feel bad. But it's no one's fault, not really. It's not even my fault. It was the drunk driver's, and he's probably going to go to jail soon."

Gar just looked at me for a second before I hugged him. He hugged me back, gently because he was being thoughtful of my injuries, but all of a sudden I wanted him to hold me really tight and to never let go. I never wanted to let go of him.

But I knew that I had to.

"Do you want to take a walk?" I asked. "I'm dying to get out of my room. It's horrible being stuck in here all the time."

"Yeah, I can see that. It's pretty creepy in here," Gar said with a grin, reverting to his old self.

"Oh, shut up."

"You know I'm right. You should probably redecorate."

"I was just thinking that. Now help me up."

For the first time in four days I was on my feet for more than a few seconds. "Whoa, head rush," I said, swaying a little. I felt Gar's hand steady my back.

"You alright?"

"Just a bit dizzy. Let's get out of here."

"So, where to?" Gar asked, putting his hands in his pockets as we walked out of my apartment.

"Anywhere. I'm just glad I can be outside again." It was butt cold and I was wearing two jackets, but it still felt great to be outside. I was just managing to walk with my boot, which wasn't exactly an easy feat but I had gotten the hang of it, when I had to sit down again.

This weakness infuriated me. "I've got to sit down, Gar."

"Are you okay?" His eyes were wide and he looked as if he wanted to pick me up and carry me.

"Why does everyone keep asking me that? No! I'm not okay. I hate being like this, I hate that I got into this car accident, I hate that I broke my leg. My stitches hurt and I don't like having to take the drugs because it makes me feel stupid." I was venting. There was a lot that I wanted to get off my spleen. "I can barely walk, these stitches keep pulling at my skin and they itch like no other. I can't stand being like this!"

"Let's go sit down on that bench over there, okay?"

"Fine," I grumbled, the pain in my side was worsening and I knew that it wouldn't be much longer before I had to stop again anyway.

The bench that he had us sit at was underneath a tree and still had frost on it so the wetness seeped through our jeans, but other than that things were better now than they were before. I could breathe easier, at least.

"This is comfortable," Gar commented, and I laughed because it wasn't, not really.

We sat in silence for a while before Gar opened his mouth again. "Look, Raven, I've got something to say to you. I've been wanting to say this for a while and I was going to tell you before you got into the accident and then there never seemed to be a good time to tell you so I'm just going to tell you now, okay?"

And just like that I knew what he was going to say. I knew why I had been freaking out at just the mere mention of him. I now knew what I going on and I didn't want any of it. Because as soon as he said it I knew what I was going to have to do.

I took a deep breath and braced myself for what I knew that he was going to say. _Don't say it don't say it don't say it. Just don't say it. _

"Okay," I manage to squeak out. _Oh God, don't say it don't say it don't say please don't say it I don't want you to say it if you say it I'm going to die. Don't say it don't say it don't say it. _

He took a deep breath. "Raven, I, um, I," he takes a deep breath. _See? You don't want to say it. Just don't say it and we'll be happier. Don't say it don't say it don't say. Just keep hesitating. Just be a coward and don't say it. Don't say it don't say it don't say it don't say it. _"Jeez, this was way easier in my head," Gar rubs the back of his neck, which tips me off that he's extremely nervous.

I keep my eyes locked on him, scared to even move. I don't want to because if I do then he might not get the mental message that I'm trying to send him. _Don't say it don't say it don't say it! _"Okay," he takes another deep breath. "Raven, I l-" _**Don't finish that thought! Don't you dare say it! Don't say it don't say it don't say it. Do not say it. **_"I love you."

He said it. He said it and now he's looking at me as if he expects me to burst into tears or to start talking about how much I love him. I don't do either. I feel too numb for that. I can't feel anything at all. There is hope shining in his eyes and I know that if I could just say the words back that he'd be estatic. But I can't do it. I can't make my mouth form the words.

That's probably because I wouldn't mean them. I _can't _mean them. That's what I had been thinking about before the big accident, right after Kori and Dick told me that love changed people. Didn't anyone ever think that maybe I don't _want _to be changed? I don't want anyone to be able to change me, not even Gar.

Love means giving yourself to someone. Love means giving in, having a piece of yourself not belong to you anymore. Love means feeling something that is way out of your control. I don't want any part of it. I never have. I never will.

"Yeah. About that, Gar," I find myself saying. I have no control over my mouth now. The words are just coming and I can't stop them. I find that I don't _want _to stop them. "Idon'."

"What? I don't understand you."

Now it's me that is taking the deep breath. "I don't think we should be together anymore." I say each word clearly and slowly as if I was talking to a particularly stupid foreign exchange student. "I don't _want _to be with you anymore."

Gar recoils in pain. I can see it in his eyes that he's hurting, bad. For about three seconds I want to take my words back but I know that it's the truth. But why does his pain make me hurt as well?

Whenever I've broken up with a guy it's never felt like this. Is it because I _want _to be with Gar? But I know I can't be. Gar deserves someone who can love him back the way I can't. My heart is too hard to ever love anyone, even a great person like Gar.

"What?" he asks, his voice cracking slightly. "Why not?"

I hadn't expected him to ask why. I didn't think he'd want a reason. I had thought that he would just take my words without an explanation. I'm grasping wildly for something to say. "Because, Gar, I just don't. It's that simple."

"Is it because I said that I loved you?" Gar asks, now his anger is growing. I had forgotten that he was there when I had broken up with 'Goth Boy'. He probably thinks that this is the same thing.

The sad thing is that he's right. He's so right that it breaks my heart. Or it would if I had one. Which I obviously don't right now.

"No," I sigh. "That's not why."

"Is there someone else?"

I almost gag at the thought. "_No! _Of course there's not anyone else. How could you even think like that?"

"Then why?"

My own anger rears its ugly head now. Why does it always take him so damn long to let go? He's like a rabid, starving dog with a piece of meat. Well, I'm not a steak.

"Don't you get it? I. Don't. Want. You. Not anymore. I'm bored with you, Gar." This is such a lie, and I'm only saying it because I'm angry. I know that, but he doesn't. My tongue is too sharp for my own good.

I just don't know who I'm angry at right now.

I know that it _is _because he loves me. But I don't love him back, I can't love him back. He needs to get out before he's too far gone. If he isn't there already.

"No, you aren't," Gar stands up and runs a hand through his hair. "I don't know why you're doing this, but it isn't because of that. Why can't you admit that you love me too?"

The thought is so preposterous that I feel like laughing. "No it's not! I don't love you."

"No, it's because your scared. That's why you're doing this. You are just so damn afraid that someone might actually love you that you have to push me away. It's how you are. You think you are so brave, but you aren't."

"Why would having you love me scare me?"

"Because you love me too. Don't deny it, you do."

"Why can't you just forget about me? Damn it Gar, go away."

"Fine," he says and I can see his own anger growing. "But in a few years when your twenty cats die don't come crying to me." He just shrugs and walks away quickly, probably off to his car so that he can peal the hell out of there. Well good.

"Don't worry! I won't! I don't need your support!" I scream at him and I watch as the words bounce off his back. I'm so angry at myself, at Gar, at the world, that I can barely see.

I put my head in my hands and wonder why watching him walk away from me like that hurts worse than my leg breaking.

**A/N: Okay, here's just a warning folks. August is a rough month for me (school and two-a-days start) so there may be no updates for a while. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Who else wants to give Raven a good kick in the head? I told her not to break up with him... but she had to do it anyway. Stupid girl. **


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own _Teen Titans._ Go ask someone else. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Seventeen_

What had I just done? I had just pushed away the one person in the world that would ever love me and I had a feeling that I was never going to get him back. He had walked off so angrily, and I had been so angry too and we really had been so upset over nothing.

Well, not nothing. Gar had every reason to be angry at me, I had been the world's biggest dunce and had worn the hat proudly, but me? What did I have to be angry about? Nothing really. My (now probably ex) boyfriend had just told me that he loved me. So many girls would kill for that. And I had just stepped on this chance and grated it into the ground with my heavily bandaged foot.

Gar was gone. He had walked away from me without even a second glance and now I was feeling the emptiness that was beginning to form in my heart. When you tear something and throw it away, is it really supposed to hurt this bad? I don't think so, but I may be wrong.

Breaking up had never felt like this before. Normally I was able to say goodbye to a boy without even a "Thank you very much for wasting your time," but this, this was different.

It couldn't have been because I loved him or anything. Oh no, that wasn't it, I could tell.

I don't have the ability to love. That aspect of the human heart had skipped right past me and went swimming and totally abandoned me. I had a feeling that it was never coming back.

But was there even that _possibility? _I didn't think so.

But you know what they say. The heart often isn't attached to the brain, and vise versa. If it was, well, the world would be a much different place. Maybe not a better one, but it'd be different.

I am not the type of person who thinks with their heart. I think logically, looking at things from different angles until I figured out what is going on and then I approach full throttle. People like Gar jump right in and don't look down until danger is about to stab them right in the face.

The one time that I had ever loved anyone, which had been all of one time, that had been enough to cure me of any desire to ever do it again. My heart just shriveled up and refused to ever let anyone else in.

Gar had loved before too, and he had gotten hurt worse than I probably did. And yet he found himself able to fall in love with me, or so he claimed. Terra had ripped him to shreds and laid him out to dry, and yet he had found the strength to heal and move on.

And here he was getting hurt again, and it was _all my fault._ I felt a tear or two or six well up in my eyes and I blinked quickly trying to get them to go away. Damn medication was making me emotionally fragile and sensitive.

He said he loved me and he claimed that I too loved him. I had dismissed that theory without even a second thought, because I knew myself, but why had there been a ring of truth around his words? Why, when he said that, did I want to believe him, and yet I had forced myself to tell him the exact opposite of what I felt.

It was the brain thing again. I had convinced myself that I wasn't in love with him, and my brain had drowned out any sort of protest from other essential parts of my anatomy. But now that I was listening to that part of me, the part that was silently screaming at the rest of me to listen to it, it suddenly took over.

And I knew then that I loved him. Maybe not in the deep passionate heart throbbing way that all of those smutty romance novels talk about, but I did love him.

I couldn't believe that I was admitting that to myself. My God, what had taken me this long to realize that? Why had it taken me this long?

Because I had been afraid. I am still afraid, actually, because I know that love can come and go as it pleases, but admitting it to myself actually makes me feel so much better.

I love Garfield Logan.

I _love _him.

I can say it to myself, now, just barely, I have to whisper it in my head, but the nugget is there and it isn't going to go away anytime soon.

I love everything about him. I love the way that he can smile at me and all of a sudden I just melt. I love how he tries so hard because he thinks that he has to, but he really doesn't have to at all because he's great the way he is. I love how he tries to put up facades to hide from the world, but they come crumbling down to me. I love how when he he laughs he doesn't care how ridiculous he looks and he throws himself into it.

And realizing this makes me begin to cry again, because of the drugs, and because of the fact that I had been keeping this so tightly inside myself. This is what my heart had been protecting. It hadn't been myself, it had been my love for him. Because if I told myself this before I would have thrown the fact that I loved him away and it would have crippled me forever.

It was also the drugs. Always the drugs.

"Raven?" I hear my name being called softly and I look up hopefully through my tears. It's only Garth, though, and my heart sinks fast. It isn't Gar. This isn't who I wanted. "Are you okay? I couldn't help but over hear you and Gar. I wasn't eavesdropping or anything, it's just that I was already outside and..."

I stopped him before he began rambling too much. "It's okay Garth, I get it. I don't imagine that we were exactly quiet." I wipe the tears off my face with the sleeve of my jacket and take a deep breath.

"So..." he asked tentatively. "Can I ask what happened?"

"Of course."

He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, "So, what exactly happened?"

"I was just the worlds biggest idiot. You know, the usual."

"Really? How?"

Seeing Garth look at me like that with concern, and not pity, written all over his face made me tear up again. "Gar told me that he loved me."

"Do you know how many girls would kill to hear their boyfriend say that? They wouldn't cry about it."

I smile slightly at that, because I had just been thinking the same thing. "I know. But Garth, I just totally messed everything up. And now he's not going to love me anymore because I'm such an idiot. I told him that I didn't love him, but I do, damn it! I do!"

Garth tentatively put his arm around me as though he was afraid that I would bite his hand off. If things were normal I might have, but lately things had been anything but normal. "Hey, it's going to be okay. I'm sure he's still going to love you. You're a great girl, Raven. You just need to remember that."

Garth is so compassionate and nice that it's hardly fair that he doesn't have anyone. He's always been a bit of a loner, but this is upsetting. "Your going to find a really nice girl one day," I predicted, "and she's going to be the luckiest girl in the world because she has you, you know that?"

Garth's mouth quirked into a mirthless smile. "When that happens I'll tell you, okay?"

"Okay." I paused for a while and watched a couple of cars go by. "I'm such an _idiot_. God."

"Well go tell him that you love him." Garth got up and moved his arm away from around me.

I gestured down to my leg. "I can't exactly _go _anywhere. My car is totaled, my leg is broken, and my mother sure as hell won't let me leave unless it's absolutely necessary."

"Tell him at school on Monday. He probably needs some time to himself anyway. He sounded pretty upset. Do you need help walking back to your apartment?" Garth asked, being his overly nice self once again.

"No, I think I've got it. It's not that far away. Thanks, Garth, for everything."

..O..

Having my mother drop me off at school was more than humiliating, but I deemed it an appropriate punishment for being such a huge jerk on Saturday.

As I hobbled to the front doors with my boot on I took a deep breath to steady myself. I was going to tell him. I was going to tell him and beg him to take me back. Even if I had to get down on the floor to do it I would if it meant getting him to forgive me. Anything. I would do anything for him.

Oh God. I sound like a disgusting heroine in one of the stupid romantic YA novels. It's too bad that it's true.

"Need help?"

I glanced up and when I saw that it was Vic I let out a breath of relief, because I really did need help, and I was willing to admit it. Silently Vic held out his hand for my backpack, and I gave it too him gratefully. "In more ways than one."

"You've got that right." I finally realized from the tone in Vic's voice that he was royally _pissed_. Usually Vic was able to hide that sort of thing from the people that don't know him very well, but I had been friends with him since about third grade.

And I probably knew what or who he was angry about. It was me, of course.

"Look, Vic, I-"

"Raven, I don't want to hear any excuses, okay? I have a fairly good idea why you did it and I just don't want to hear it because I know that if I do I'm going to be even more pissed. So just don't, okay."

"But Vic, it's not like that anymore. I want to make it up to him. I know I made a mistake but you can't just-"

Once again Vic interrupted me. "I hope you can. It's going to take a lot to do that, you know."

"What do you mean?"

Vic looked at me mournfully and shook his head. "You're one of my best friends, Raven, and you might have your reasons for doing what you did. You're always going to be one of my friends, but this is something different. We can't help you with this."

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"I know that you're neighbors with Garth and everything, but Raven, did you really think that..."

"What? What about Garth? He doesn't have anything to do with this!"

"Raven, Gar _saw _you two. He said that Garth had his arm around you and everything. You and I both know that you hardly ever let people touch you unless you're about to die or if you really care about them, because that's just how you are."

"Gar thinks that _Garth _and I are something, and that's why I broke up with him?"

"Well, isn't it?"

I managed to look Vic straight in the eye, even despite our height difference. "No. It's not. I broke up with him because I am the stupidest person in the world, and because you were right about me, about everything." I glanced down at my crutches feeling like a jerk. Those cars that passed by. One of them must have been Gar. "Why are you always right?"

"It's a curse."

"I need to find him. I need to explain. Do you know where he is?"

"Gar? He should be in the West Wing. Do you want your backpack back?"

"No, keep it for right now. I need to get there in a hurry." The West Wing was about halfway across the school, but if I kept up a decent pace I should have been able to get there right before the first bell rang.

My gimpy self and I practically galloped over there and by the time I got there I was out of breath. But I saw him, clear as day, looking just the way that I left him. He smiled at something someone said, and then he saw me. His smile fell off his face like melted butter and he just looked at me.

With that one look I saw his expressions change from anger to hurt to sadness right back to anger again. I could tell that he was looking at me and thinking _E tu Brute? j_ust like Julius Ceaser did to Brutus.

He thinks that I cheated on him the same way that Terra did. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

"Gar..." I started, and took a deep breath. "I-"

"Don't." Was it just me or was I getting interrupted a lot today? "Please, just, don't." Gar's voice cracked on the last syllable. "I don't want to hear it. I was in love with you, I still am, and you just tore my heart out and gave it to your dog to eat."

"But-"

"Raven, you should have just told me. It would have been better that way. Obviously I'm just not enough for people or something."

Tears came to my eyes again (it was the medicine, it had to be) and I wanted to hug him. Because he was exactly enough for me. He was amazing, and yet he didn't see it, not like he should have.

"I didn't, I mean, we aren't..."

"Goodbye," he told me, with such finality that I knew that he wasn't going to talk to me again, not for a long time. Just thinking about that made me want to start sobbing. As it was I just turned around and pressed my fingertips to my eyes chanting in my head _I must not cry. I must not cry. I must not cry. I can't cry. I must not cry. _

I just hobbled over to an enclave between a snack machine and a wall with a poster that boasted '_Attitude is EVERYTHING!' _and slid down the wall, letting my broken leg go straight.

I was destined to be alone forever. That had to be it. Why else would every single relationship that I had ever been in go up in flames all because of me? This has to be a sign. It is a sign.

Now that I actually found out that I have a heart I have no one to share it with. The best candidate for that just turned his back on me and now won't look back. I don't blame him. If something like that had happened to me and I saw him with his arm around some other girl I would probably think the same thing. I would be a whole lot uglier to Gar than he is being to me.

So, in some ways, I'm lucky.

He could hate me forever. But at least there is the slight chance that he might just forgive me. Remember, I said _slight_ chance.

I am just about to drown in self pity when I hear a voice say, "I never thought I'd see the day." It's Terra. Of course.

The last person that I want to see in the whole entire universe and she just happens to stumble across me. Lovely. "Terra, just leave me the hell alone, okay? I don't want you here."

Terra snorts. "You think I care? I need to skip Spanish, okay? Senor Garza gives me the skivvies, and you just happen to be in my hiding spot. So get over yourself and move over."

I don't budge an inch, and she sighs and plops down on the area of floor that is as far away from me as can be. "What are you going to do to me now? I don't want to start anything right now, Terra."

"I'm not going to do anything like that to you, Raven. Not now, anyway. That'd be like kicking an abused puppy and then eating it. What's the fun in that? You look like shit, by the way."

"Thanks," I said sarcastically.

"No problem," she says as she opens her backpack and gets out some yellow yarn and starts knitting. I had forgotten that she did that. Heck, I had forgotten that she was _human. _For so long I had hated the sight of her, and now she was being semi decent. For her, anyway. She wasn't kicking me while I was already down. That said something, especially because I had kicked her ass the last time that I had been this close to her.

"You really do, though. You're practically crippled and you look like someone just stepped on you."

"Yeah, well, when you get your heart broken that tends to happen." I couldn't believe that I had just said that, but the words really had grown legs and just walked out of my mouth.

Terra stopped knitting. "Hurts doesn't it? Makes you just want to find them and hurt them just as bad, right?"

Actually it didn't. But I didn't want to tell her that. If that was how she thought then more power to her, I guess. She must be a psychopath, or something. I just sat there and she continued. "You can't let yourself care about anyone other than yourself. I mean, look at me. I'm the biggest bitch on this side of the Atlantic, but I'm not the one hiding from her ex boyfriend looking like a pile of shit warmed over."

"Terra?"

"Shut the hell up."

"I'm just telling you. I've got to go, but think about this, okay Raven? You're a stronger person than you think you are, and while sometimes it's annoying, you generally are right about people and doing the right thing. Whatever's going on with Gar I think you'll figure it out."

It wasn't the first time that Terra was wrong about something.

**A/N: An early update! I have access to a computer and I can't pass this chance up, so here you go. Chapter seventeen in all of it's unedited glory! I hope you guys enjoyed. The part at the end was actually pretty fun to write. I couldn't leave Terra like how she was in this story. It was bothering me, and I thought that this was actually pretty in character for her, for some reason. I hope you enjoyed! **


	19. Chapter Eighteen

**Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. I do, however, own some of the episodes on my iPod. (Lord I'm such a nerd...) **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Eighteen_

I stayed in my little corner for two class periods, dunking myself into pools of self pity, when I decided it was time to get over myself and get my butt to class. All of my teachers probably thought that I didn't want to go to college because of all the times I had 'other things to do' and decided not to go to class.

When I had gone to get my backpack from Vic and he gave me a loaded look, and I knew then that Gar had told him about our conversation. Well, either that or he somehow knew that I had talked to him with his magical mind powers or something.

It totally wouldn't have surprised me. It would, at the very least, explain how he knew everything.

With my backpack on my homework I strove to class, only to realize too late that it was one of my classes with Gar in it. I wanted to backpedal as soon as I saw him sitting in his usual seat, with an empty seat right beside him (The only one in the whole room, of course. Just my luck, I mean really.) but the teacher had seen me and I knew that it would be pointless to even bother trying to get out of his line of vision. He had some kind of 'Spidey-sense' and he would have known if I was going to get out of his class.

With my head down I walked to my desk and placed my backpack on it lightly. I snuck a peak at Gar, but he was very determinedly looking away from me. I didn't blame him, not in the slightest.

I tried opening my backpack, but for some reason the zipper was stuck and I couldn't get it open. I kept trying and trying to get that stupid zipper open and then suddenly it did open. The zipper broke off from the backpack and took along with it several inches of fabric.

It was all I could do not to cry. (Stupid medication, making me react all funky and weird and out of character.) This day just kept getting progressively worse and worse and worse. What was next? Was I going to be struck by lightning? Probably. I probably deserved it anyway.

I was just staring, dumbfounded, at the stupid backpack and then I just decided to calmly pick up my most current book and read it. I determinedly didn't look at Gar for about fifteen minutes until I couldn't stand it anymore and I had to at least glance at him.

He was just staring at the front of the room, fingers lightly drumming on his desk. His eyes seemed fixated on the clock, as if counting down the seconds until he could get away from me.

I bit my lip and went back to the pages of my novel, unable to see them coherently. How could I care what Stella and Reg were doing when I had problems of my own right now? Stupid fake people. Everyone knew that they were going to get a happy ending. In real life we didn't have that luxury. In the real world when you get hit by a bomb you didn't miraculously get to live, even if you were crippled from the waist down. You died. End of story.

Oh God, now I was trying to compare my life to a book. I really was going insane. I shut the book, giving up any pretense that I was actually reading it, and laid my head down on my desk and decided to be as uncomfortable as was humanly possible.

I was.

You couldn't have cut the tension with a knife it was so thick and hard and unwavering between me and Gar. All around us kids were going crazy, talking loudly and throwing pieces of paper at each other because the teacher was out of the room (oh if I had only walked away when I had the chance!) but Gar and I were acting like angels.

If angels ever acted like angst ridden teenagers, that is.

Time seems to slow down when you are dreading something... or if you just want to get something over and done with ASAP. That is a truth of life that I learned that day sitting beside the boy I loved, but also wanting to get as far away from him as humanly possible.

I thought that the clock was slowing down due to the unresolved tension between Gar and I but then the bell rang and Gar practically sprinted to the door, leaving me and my broken backpack behind without even a second glance.

oOo

School had finally ended. I wanted to dance joyfully in the streets. I might have if it wasn't for the fact that I had a broken leg and more stitches than a quilt. Thank God the rest of the day went quickly.

Well, sort of quickly. Lunch was a rushed affair. I had eaten my daily offering from the cafeteria and then gotten the heck out of there as soon as I could. The rest of my friends had acted just as awkwardly as Gar and I had, knowing that things between us hadn't ended well.

If things had been different, if the break up had been mutual and not because of my stupid self, if it had come naturally then things probably wouldn't have been as awful at our lunch table. But they were, and I should have seen something like this coming.

All of this anguish for just a few months of dating and falling in love. Was it worth it, or were people just deluding themselves? It was just like jumping into a blazing fire, either you got burned... or you got burned. And that was the end of it.

Then I began thinking of all of the things that made Gar and I so great. The fact that we got along, despite all of our differences. The way his voice sounded when he told me his hopes and dreams with his head in my lap. The way he held my hands and said he needed them for warmth.

Hundreds of images and memories, all pertaining to Gar, bombarded me in that moment and I realized that yes, it was worth it. Nothing worth anything was gotten easily. If you didn't have to work at something, if it didn't hurt you just a little bit, if it got handed to you you didn't deserve it. It was as simple as that.

A hand grabbed my arm, knocking me out of my thoughts. "Raven, can we do the talking please?" Kori asked. I turned around stunned. She had hardly talked to me all day, and I had been assuming that she had taken Gar's side of things. But the way that she was looking at me made me think that Vic had probably talked to her, and that was a good thing.

I needed Kori on my side for this.

"Yeah, Kori, I think that'd be a good idea. But my mom is driving me home and I can't really walk." I gestured hopelessly to my injured leg.

"Just call her and I will drive you home." Kori looked extremely determined when she said this and I knew that there was no way that I was getting out of this, even if I had wanted to. But I actually _wanted _to talk to her. I had some things that I wanted to say.

"Okay?" I got my phone out and dialed my home phone number quickly and told my mom that I was getting a ride and that I'd be home later, and she reminded me that I needed another dose of my medication, which I would be getting off of soon, and I said that was fine. Then I hung up.

Kori was watching me the whole time, as if afraid that if she turned her back I'd try to hobble away. I didn't blame her. I didn't blame anyone for anything that they did to me anymore. I probably deserved whatever treatment they were giving me more than I thought that I did.

"Here, so you do not have to walk I will go and get my car and pull it up to the front."

"Thanks." Kori nodded and went to go get her car out of the student lot. As soon as she swung by the curb I slid into her front seat and she drove off, going the opposite direction of her house or mine.

I sat there picking at the rip in my backpack, wondering where the heck we were going and who was going to talk first.

"Friend Raven, are you doing the okay?" I did a mental scan of myself. I was upright and walking around and talking to people. Yes I was a bit heart sick (more than a bit) but that was manageable. I could deal with it. People, no matter how melodramatic they were, didn't die from that. Yes, I was doing reasonably okay.

"Yeah, Kori, I'm fine."

"No, you are not. Not really. Please, tell me your side of the story."

I paused for a second, unsure of what to say, or if I should even tell her at all. But this was Kori, one of my closet girlfriends. If I couldn't tell her then who could I tell?

The way that Kori was looking at me made me _want _to tell her because Kori honestly _cared_ and she wouldn't judge me for it. Kori never judged people, not even when they really deserved it, because she knew what it was like to be judged.

I opened my mouth. "Well, actually, it started like this..." and then I told her everything, starting from the very beginning to what was currently the end. I couldn't stop, it was almost like word vomit except not nearly as messy.

And the whole time Kori nodded her head and listened to me explain every little detail, even that one really weird dream and the color of his shirt, and just let me talk until I had run out of words and was once again fiddling with my broken zipper.

She let me do that in silence for a while before she decided to respond. She opened her mouth and then closed it again. I was shocked. Kori always knew what to say, how to act, how to respond. These things came naturally to her, the way that reading fast had always been natural to me. It seemed odd that she was off on something like this. I would have thought that she would have been able to respond as if it was nothing. These were things that she dealt with all the time.

"And you really care about him?" she finally asked, and I exhaled, letting all of the air that I had been holding while I was waiting for her question out. At least she had asked something easy, something that could be answered quicker than a snap of my fingers.

"Yes, I really do," I said softly.

Kori's mouth was set into a tight line. "Then I am sorry that things ended up like this between the two of you. You two were like... like... I cannot even explain it correctly. I had never thought that you two would ever break up."

"Yeah, me neither," I mumbled, but Kori ignored me and kept going.

"He loved you a lot. I do not think that you realized that Raven."

"Well he doesn't anymore."

"No, I think he does," Kori disagreed, shaking her head and making her red hair go everywhere. "He just does not want to anymore. I do not think that Dick would ever forgive me if he thought that I had cheated on him with someone else."

I think for a moment about how Dick looks at Kori, and this time I'm the one shaking _my _head. "No, he would. Or at least he'd let you explain."

"Yes, it is rather strange that he will not even let you do that. It is not like him not to do the forgiving and the forgetting. But if you think about it, like I have, it is probably because of Terra."

I groaned and put my head up against the seat while I think about our conversation earlier this morning which feels like a lifetime ago. Why does she have to ruin _everything_? "I know. That's why all of this sucks so much. And Garth and I just hugged! It didn't even mean anything."

Kori pursed her lips deep in thought. "Actually I don't think that is true, at least not on Garth's side."

I'm about to protest, Kori can tell that much by the look on my face, but she puts up her hand to stop me. "You have not seen the way that he looks at you, but I have, and Gar has. He at least has the crush on you, if not more."

I feel like laughing, even on my downtrodden by the earth state. Garth? Having a crush on me? Now that's just plain ridiculous. Honestly, we just lived in the same building and had a conversation at least twice a week, nothing more than that. "I don't think so..."

"Well I do. It was almost quite obvious, but you are not exactly the most..." Kori had to think about how to word this, but I knew what was coming, "attentive girl, especially when it comes to matters like this one."

Very true. But how the hell was I supposed to know that Garth had a thing for me? That's just ridiculous and unreasonable. It's kind of like expecting a puppy to learn how to fly. It just doesn't happen. Gar should know this about me, I mean honestly. How long did it take me to figure out that I was in love with him?

Not that he knew that I loved him. Not like he actually cared that I loved him. Not like in the end any of this actually mattered anyway.

I put my head in my hands in frustration. I wanted to scream or throw something. I wanted to act violently.I couldn't do it in a car, though.

Everything in my life right now was tangled and knotted, when before everything was so easy and smooth. If I could have gone back in time, to oh, about three days ago, I would have done it in a heartbeat. People never appreciate what they have until it's gone.

Me especially.

..O..

Kori dropped me off about ten minutes after our little talk. It was amazing how much better I felt knowing that I had a friend that was totally on my side. Vic couldn't be totally on my side, not really, because both he and Gar and because he was Gar's number one best friend. He and I were fairly close, yes, but it was nothing compared to the bond that he and Gar shared.

When I walked in I heard my mother's opera, which is what she listens to when she paints (thankfully it was not her happy music, which at this point in my day would have made me go insane), was playing. But as soon as my mother heard the door close (which I closed admittedly a bit loudly without meaning to) she came running out, a smear of blue paint on her cheekbone and a bit in her hair.

"Oh honey," she said when she saw me. "What happened?" She came toward me and hesitantly put her arms around me, like she expected me to pull away. I have to admit that was my instinct's reaction, but I managed to stifle them.

It was still kind of hard for me to swallow, this caring mother routine (which, hopefully, wasn't just a routine after all), but I had to admit that it felt _good_. It was nice being able to melt into my mother's arms like I was a little girl again, like she could wave her magical mother wand and all of my problems would be solved like _that_.

"How could you tell?" I asked, my voice slightly muffled since my face was in the crook of her neck. I had never really noticed it before but I was slightly shorter than she was.

"The look on your face when you walked in the door," she replied, letting go of me as she sat on the couch and patted the cushions invitingly. I accepted and sat down next to her and she wrapped her arm around me.

It was amazing how easy this felt after all of this time. The bond between a mother and her child, no matter how strained it had once been, can always come back if you just let it all go. It is the natural course of things, after all.

"So what's up?" she tried again. I could tell that she was afraid that I was going to tell her to leave me alone, which I would have done before my accident, and then I would storm into my room, but strangely I had no urge to do that. It felt great talking about this, anyway.

I had never been one to talk about my problems all the time. I was much more likely to keep them to myself than to divulge them to other people. This was a special case, though, simply because people could tell that I felt miserable about it.

I knew why this was making me react like this, normally no one could make heads or tails of my emotional state, but I was actually really upset about this.

"Well... it's Gar," I started tentatively, having already used up my angst stores for today.

"Oh no!" Instantly my mother was concerned. "Why? What happened? Did you two break up?"

I grimaced. How to explain this without painting myself as the bad guy? "Yeah, we did."

"Why?"

"Because of me."

"What did you do?" My mother's eyes were intent on my face and she gripped my hand.

"Well, basically it boils down to the fact that he told me that he loved me and I freaked out about it and broke up with him."

"Why did you do that?"

"Because... I thought that I couldn't love him. I was afraid to, I was afraid of that. Not anymore, of course, but I was a bit slow figuring that out."

"But why would you be afraid to love someone?"

I just looked at her, and it took her a minute, but eventually she realized what I was referring to. She just looked at me and then took her arm away from mine and began playing with her bracelets. She wasn't looking at me while she spoke.

"Don't let your stupid mother's mistakes define who you are, especially about something this important."

She paused, and then she decided to look at me, the eyes that were so much like mine practically glittering. "I knew that I had screwed you up, but not this much. Raven, just because all of those men and all of those marriages didn't work out doesn't mean that for you they won't. You're such a different person than I am. You're much more thoughtful and reserved and you don't have the attention span of a gnat. You're also a thousand times smarter than I am, and you're prettier than I am too."

Mom smiled softly when she saw the disbelief on my face. "It's true. You have so much more to offer the world." At this she grabbed my hand. "Don't let me stunt you. You have to make the choice to grow. Do it. Don't let something like me stop you."

"But I- I," I started, but she didn't let me finish, which was probably a good thing. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say anyway.

"It's okay to be afraid of things, it's only natural, but you can't ever be afraid of love. You'll know what to do when the time comes, don't worry. It's as easy as breathing when you let go. Gar will come back to you, or you just have to go to him. Believe me, if it's meant to be it will be. If it's not, well, you know how the rest of that goes."

I knew.

**A/N: I know I'm such a horrible person. (Don't kill me. *shies away from the angry pitchforks*) The sad thing is, though, that I kept putting this off and putting this off but when I finally sat down to write it it was effortless. That should really tell you something about how lazy I can get. (Also, this is unedited, largely because I didn't want you to have to wait any longer. It's been what, over a month now? SORRY I would tell you my excuses, but then I'd be here all day.) **

**Buckle down folks! This story is almost over. I'll try to have the next chapter out soon, promise! **


	20. Chapter Nineteen

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognize. I do, however, own Mrs. Baros, who is heavily influenced by my own English teacher. :D **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Nineteen_

It seemed kind of odd to me that the next two weeks flew by so fast. It was a whirlwind really. Time had been going so slow and then all of a sudden time decided that it was bored so it took a sharp left turn, and started flying again.

Before I knew it two weeks had passed and neither Gar nor I tried to talk to each other again. Me, because I'm a coward and I just didn't want to get hurt by him again. Because it really did hurt when he didn't want to listen to me. I am not a machoist and I didn't want to be subjected to that again. A few times I had tried to be brave and I attempted to go up to him, but he gave me a look and I knew that it would be futile to even try.

Gar didn't talk to me because number one: I was an idiot. Number two: I can't ever be in a relationship without screwing something up. And number three, my personal favorite: I'm pretty sure that he now hates my stinking guts.

It's not like I could blame him, but still it bothered me. He had been my best friend, and my boyfriend, all in one and now I had lost both of those things. This was even worse than the time that I had gotten so angry at him because of the whole Terra/my mother was a drunk thing. This was worse than any sort of petty fight were we were both pretty sure that we were going to become friends again, maybe. This time I wasn't so sure.

I wasn't sure at all.

..O..

It was kind of funny to me now that I was going to class all the time and began delving myself into my school work, even though I had already been excepted into my dream school months and months ago. I've never really noticed before, because I've never really needed to notice before, but schoolwork does a really good job of numbing your brain so that you don't care about anything anymore.

Most of it is just so boring, or just so hard, that it either takes up your whole head or you can't focus on anything, anything at all because your brain is so scrambled.

The only class that didn't get this reaction was my AP English class, and that was because I actually enjoyed that class, and it was pretty easy to me. Plus I had already finished most of my project anyway, I just had to write the stupid paper.

"Hello class," Mrs. Baros, walked in and placed a piece of paper on her desk. "Today I'll be checking on your progress and see how everyone's doing. There's only a month until it's due, after all."

A few of my classmates groaned (Is it just me, or do a lot of people do that in English class all the time?), but I just shrugged and got out my binder and pulled out all of my interviews and the definition that I had gotten from the Webster's Dictionary and placed them on my desk, knowing that Mrs. Baros will probably just be able to look over my stuff and move on to the next kid waiting in line.

But instead of doing that like I expected when she stopped by my desk she shuffled through my papers and asked, "Where's your other interview, Raven?"

I looked up startled, I hadn't been expecting that at all. "What are you talking about? I have all of them right in front of me. You said that we only needed three or four. I have four."

Mrs. Baros pursed her lips. "Yes, well that's with _most _topics. With your particular topic, though, I think that it would be prudent for you to do another interview, simply because the answers could be so varied and different. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

For a moment I started thinking about all the answers, all of the interesting and surprising answers that I had gotten from my friends and my mother and I understood what she was saying, I really did. But I had spent so much time and hard work on those stupid things, I _really _didn't want to have to go through that again.

Besides there was one person that I had not interviewed yet and I knew that there was no way in hell that I could get them to help me with _this _assignment. I couldn't go up to them and ask them what they thought of romantic love.

They'd totally laugh in my face, I could just imagine it now. Either that or they'd start shouting at me, asking me what I thought I was doing.

I couldn't help it, I cringed when I answered. "Sure, it'll be no problem."

"Good. Is there anyone in particular that you're thinking of interviewing?"

"Can I interview you?" It was worth a shot at the very least...

Mrs. Baros just laughed. "No, I don't think that that's going to work, sorry. If you interviewed me then everyone would have to interview me, and I don't really want to give my opinion out on cat litter, thank you very much."

"Why don't you ask that Gar boy that you're friends with. He doesn't seem to have been asked if I looked correctly..." She shuffled through my papers again and I knew that she wasn't going to find his name anywhere on those things.

I frowned. "I don't really think that'd be a good idea. You see, we're kind of not speaking right now and I don't think that this would really help things. Like at all."

She put a heavily ringed hand on my desk. "Tell him that this is purely professional and that no feelings, whether pleasant or not, are going to be shared over this. Okay?"

"I'll try."

..O..

I tried very, very hard not to have to interview Gar. I had even bothered to interview random people, and believe me, it isn't all that easy going to up to a bunch of gossiping girls and asking them what they thought that romantic love was. They generally looked at me like I was insane and just walked away. It was so pathetic.

For a moment I thought about asking Terra if she would do my interview, but as soon as my desperate brain even _tried _to suggest it the rest of me violently protested and I knew that there was no way that I was going do _that. _I would totally and utterly interview Gar first.

And the really sad thing was that this was the only time that I had ever noticed how small my circle of friends really way. They really were the only people that I felt comfortable talking to and now that was biting me in the butt.

But there's no way that I'm going to make myself get some new friends. Sad as it was I wasn't going to open up my comfort zone this late in the school year just to make a couple friends that I'd most likely forget about by the end of the summer.

So I took a deep breath and walked over to Gar, who was standing in the middle of the hallway talking to some guys that are on the track team with him. All of the boys that were talking to him eagerly before fell silent when they saw me approach.

Gar turned around, probably wondering why they had just shut up, but when he saw me he understood. Evidently the whole boys track team knew too. Fantastic. Lord only knows what gets said about me in the boy's locker room now...

"Hey, Raven," one of the track kids said, obviously trying (and failing) to soothe the tension that I had just created. "What's up?"

He was acting as though I knew his name the way that he knew mine, yet another way that I knew that they had talked about me before. "Can I talk to Gar really fast? Or is this really important?"

"Well..." Gar answered quickly, seeming like he was going to reject me, but that same track kid intervened before he could finish. (I was starting to really like this kid. Maybe I should interview him instead...)

"No, no! We weren't talking about much of anything. So, like, yeah, I think we should go now. Guys?" he waved for his friends to follow him and they did as they were bidden, walking out to the parking lot to leave school just like the other kids.

"I think that they're scared of you," Gar said, sounding more normal towards me then he had in a while, but when I looked up and saw the expression in his eyes I knew that things were far from normal between us.

"Scared of me? Please. No one's ever scared of me."

I knew that before Gar would have said something, something that probably would have made me chuckle, but now he just raised his eyebrows and said nothing. We stood there in silence for a while before he asked, "What do you need, Raven?"

"What I need is to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk to you, Raven. We both know what happened."

"No," I said, probably a bit impatiently. "Not about that, even though you're totally wrong about that and you won't listen to me if I tried to explain it anyway. It didn't happen the way you think it did. I swear to you, the only thing that happened was-"

"I thought we weren't going to talk about this!" Gar practically shouted.

"Sorry," I sighed. "I spoke before I thought. Anyway, what I meant to ask you, is that you know how I had that huge project in English?"

"Yeah..." he looked at me warily, as if he expected me to tell him about what really happened.

"Well I need to interview one more person. And you, you lucky duck, are exactly who I need."

"What was your topic again?" he asked, arranging his backpack from one shoulder to the other as we walked to his car. I doubted that he'd give me a ride, but we needed to get out of the hallway before the principal came over. "Something about love, wasn't it?" And then he started laughing, almost bitterly. Coming from him the sound hurt, especially because I knew that it was because of me. "You, _you _of all people are going to ask _me _about love?"

"Yes," I answered stiffly, and something on my face made his amusement cool. "It isn't as though I have a lot of choice! I've already interviewed everyone else."

"Glad to know that I'm a last resort." Gar snorted. "Okay, Raven, hit me just one more time."

I ignored the obvious jab at me and asked, "Okay, what do you think romantic love is, or what it's about?"

Instead of just being a jerk and laughing it off like I thought he would, Gar actually furrowed his eyebrows and looked at me thoughtfully, chewing the inside of his cheek. "I think that it's a lot of things, that it's just really this big combination of ideas and feelings and desire and a whole bunch of things that people have made up. But you want to know what it's really about?"

Gar leaned really close to me when he said this and I almost wanted to close the gap between him and kiss him on the lips, a rare thing for me, because I could and because I had missed him so much this whole time that we had been apart.

"What?"

"Trust. You can't love someone without trusting them. Well, I guess you can, but those people that can are just unstable and weird and we aren't talking about them." Gar looked me straight in the eye when he said that, and I knew exactly what he was getting at.

"Look, Gar," I almost started pleading. Almost, but I had my pride and no boy was going to ever get me on my knees to beg. This would be our very last shot and I knew that if he didn't listen to me now I was never going to do something like this ever again for him and then our love would both go unrequited. "It wasn't what you think. You want to know something, do you want to know what I realized when you left me all alone? What I realized when Garth had been hugging me. I had been in love with you this whole time and I didn't even realize it until it was too late. And I was going to try and tell you that, that horrible day but you wouldn't listen to me and then I realized what you had seen, and _God_, I have been such and idiot, but..."

Gar had been hanging on my every word, but just then the phone that I had been borrowing from my mother rang, shattering the little quiet world that we had built around ourselves.

I was just going to ignore my phone when it quieted and keep going but it rang again. And again. And again.

"You might want to get that, Raven," Gar said helpfully.

"Damn it," I growled, cursing that little silver piece of plastic to the tortures of Hades. I had to dig through my backpack before I found it. "_Hello_?" I asked rather viciously. This had better be good or else I was going to scream.

It was Kevin, and he was saying something totally incomprehensible to me, and I could make out some beeping in the background. "_What?" _Now I was confused. "Calm down, Kevin."

I kept my eyes on Gar, who was looking at me questionably, when I finally started understanding what he was saying now that he had mercifully slowed down his English. "Oh God." I couldn't help but notice the way Gar's eyes flashed to my face. "Okay, I'll try to get there soon."

I shut the phone and just stood there in shock for a little while, unsure of what to say. "What? God, _what_?" Gar asked me, probably unable to stand the suspense anymore.

"My mom," I answered, looking at him. "She's having her baby."

**A/N: Yeah, it's kind of short, but hey! It's up! Go me. :P Sorry for the cliffhanger, but I couldn't help myself. This is almost OVEEER... **


	21. Chapter Twenty

**Disclaimer: Twenty chapters plus an prologue later, and I still don't own the characters in this story. Oh darn. **

_Philophobia_

_Chapter Twenty_

Gar stared at me as though he had never heard the word baby before. "What?" he asked, mentally scratching his head.

"My mother. Is giving birth. To the baby that she's been carrying around for nine months," I answered, talking slowly and clearly.

"Oh." For a moment Gar seemed to be letting the information flow through his brain, and then he _got _it. _"Oh," _he gasped. "Oh crap. Raven, do you need a ride over to the hospital?"

I tried not to show that this had been exactly what I had been hoping that he'd say. "Yeah, I do. You don't mind do you? Because, I mean, I could always get another ride..." I trailed off, lying through my teeth. I most likely couldn't get another ride, at least not a fast one.

"No, it's fine. Come on, get in. What hospital is she at?"

"She's at Saint Mary's," I said, reciting the information that my mother had instilled into me for the past month, just in case I wasn't with her when it happened. I had kind of been hoping that I would be there with her, but I knew that I was lucky being with Gar. I probably couldn't handle seeing my mother's water break.

When we got there I went up to the front desk and asked for an Arella Roth. "She's in room two thousand eighty six on level four," the bored receptionist said, already looking toward the person behind me to see what they wanted. They obviously didn't pay her enough.

"Fourth floor, room two thousand eighty six," I repeated to Gar, and he nodded and started walking toward the elevators. "You know," I began. The silence between us wasn't an uncomfortable one now, but I still wanted to break it so that I could calm down a little bit. On the inside I was freaking out the way that a new mother would be.

I wondered what she'd be like, if she'd look like my mother and me or someone else. I wondered if she'd even like me. But we most likely had hours, and years, before we would find that out so it didn't really matter.

"It's kind of weird that you were the one that I was with when it happened. I'm just glad that it was you, though," I added and I watched his expression change. It seemed like he wanted to smile, but he couldn't, or wouldn't.

"Yeah," he finally answered, "me too. I'm glad that I was with you too. I'm always glad to be with you, Raven."

The elevator stopped and it saved me from having to respond to that, which was something that I was greatful for. Technology, ending one awkward moment at a time.

How could he say something like that to me, especially when we were in this fragile state? It was amazing how just a few simple words from him could affect me. My insides where in a whirl and I completely missed my mother's room and I didn't even notice until Gar called my name.

"Raven."

"What?" I snapped, and he looked at me strangely.

"You missed her room. It's right over here," he gestured to the door at his right and I went right past him and open the door. The room had a view of the highway, but that was about all that it had going for it.

It was a pretty normal hospital room, except it held my mother and Kevin. I told Kevin, "Hi," and he and Gar gave each other that male head bob thing because males don't say hi, they don't have to. Or something.

I went straight to my mother, who looked like she was in a lot of pain already. "Hey mom," I said.

"Hi honey." She opened her eyes slowly toward me, and I realized that this was probably difficult. I didn't want to have her act all cheery and happy when I knew that she was in pain like this.

"We just wanted you to know that we're here," I said. "And now we're going to go. I don't think that Gar could deal with all of the blood." Gar nodded rapidly at those words, and my mother smiled weakly. I squeezed her hand and kissed her forehead. "See you and the baby soon."

I waved good-bye to Kevin and then I went out the door, Gar following close behind as if my mother was going to start spewing blood at any second. When we got to the maternity ward sitting room there were a lot of people sit around and laughing or they were sitting with their hands over their faces. It was kind of funny, the range of emotions that people could have in such close range of one another.

"I'm going to call the others and see if they can, or want, to come," I told Gar, and he nodded and went and sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs that the hospital so generously allowed the people to sit down in.

I walked over to the stairwell, which was the only place that I could get reception, and even then not much of it, and I called Kori. She and Dick were together right now and so there was no point in calling both of them. Kori's phone went straight to voice mail and I didn't feel like listening to Kori's perky voice mail message, but I left a message anyway.

When I called Vic he answered on the third ring. "What's up?" he asked, and I heard someone, possibly his girlfriend Sarah, giggle in the background.

"Hey. My mom's having the baby. Or she should be soon." I leaned my back against the cool wall and let my head relax on it too. I was comfortable here and I didn't really want to go back into the waiting room with that pink elephant hanging around in there.

"Really? That's great! Do you want me and Sarah to go over there and wait with you?"

For a minute I considered it, but then I decided against it. The two of them had only been dating a month and they probably still wanted all of the alone time that they could get. "You guys don't have to. I'm pretty sure that we can live without you."

"We?"

"Yeah, Gar's here with me." I sighed. "It's a long story."

"Well now I've got to come." I groaned at his reply. Of course he would say that. Of course.

"You do that. I've got to go. See you, and tell Sarah I said hi."

Vic told me good-bye and then we both hung up. I took a deep breath and then walked into the waiting room. Gar was sitting in the same chair that he was when I left him to make my phone calls and his fingers were nervously tapping a rhythm on the arm of the chair.

He looked up when I entered the room and he gave me a nervous smile. I felt myself smile back somewhat and then went and sat beside him. "So, do you think that everything's going to be all right?" Gar asked.

"Yeah, I think so. I mean, she's had a kid before, obviously, because I'm sitting right here."

"Yep."

We were quiet for a little bit, but I couldn't help myself. I just had to ask him. "Why did you say that earlier?"

"Why did I say what earlier?"

I was extremely tempted to hit my head against the pale green wall behind me. Instead I clasped my hands together and squeezed my own fingers tight in suppressed frustration. Then I decided to tell him what I was talking about. "Earlier, in the elevator when you said that you were always glad to be with me. Why did you say that?"

Gar shrugged. "Because it's true, and you know it."

"Actually, I thought that you hated me."

"Raven, I could never hate you. No matter how badly that I want to sometimes, I just... can't."

Only Garfield Logan would be able to tell me that, even after I broke his heart. Of course he wouldn't hate me. I was being ridiculous even thinking that. I love him and he loves me and even while we're being idiots that doesn't change anything. Not one damn thing.

"I'm sorry that you can't hate me. I wish you could. Then things would be so much easier."

"Why? Because then I wouldn't love you and you wouldn't love me? What has you so scared of love, Raven? What?"

I wanted to tell him that I wasn't really afraid of love anymore, because I wasn't. I had seen what it could do to people, even me, and while I knew that I couldn't tame it the emotion would always be a part of my life.

"I'm tired of being hurt or hurting other people," I find myself saying. Here we were, having out little love saga in the middle of a hospital waiting room. It'd be funny if it was happening to someone else. "And I always, always do that."

"You aren't going to hurt me anymore, Raven, because I'm not going to let you." And then he leaned in and kissed me for what felt like several days but in reality was probably only five minutes. A clapping noise right above our heads interuppted us and made us break apart.

I look up to see a grinning Vic in front of me and his girlfriend Sarah behind him. She looks astonished and I don't blame her. I'm still kind of astonished myself. Gar's glaring Vic, because once again he's managed to ruin a moment, but I don't mind. I don't think that I could mind anything, to be honest, not even when Vic said, "Yep, it's official. I'm always right."

...O...

I gripped Gar's hand tighter and walked into the room. The lights were off but it wasn't all that dark, not yet. My mother was all propped up on pillows and she smiled at me as I came closer. Gar squeezed my hand gently and I let go of it, going to gingerly hug my mother and the little baby that she had in her arms.

"She's beautiful," I breathed, because she really did look beautiful, at least to me. Melvin, my sister, was sleeping contently, all tired out of coming into this world. I hoped that she was ready for what she just got herself into.

"She looks just like you when you were a baby," Mom told me, and then she grinned, her face shiny and her hair sweaty. She still looked beautiful, though. "Do you want to hold her?"

I really wanted to say no, but I did it anyway. "Careful with her head," my, our, mother warned me and I ever so gently held onto my new sister. I gently kissed her forehead and looked at her sleeping face. I wondered how she would grow up, and I hope that she would have an easier time of it than I would.

Then I handed her back to Kevin, who looked absolutely scared out of his mind, as he should be, what with being a new dad and all.

Gar put a hand on his shoulder. "Watch out for that one," Gar told Kevin. "Those Roth girls, they really know how to get to a guy."

We all laughed, and I stood up on my tip toes and gave Gar a kiss on the cheek, simply for being so amazing.

"Let's go home," Gar said, jingling his keys in his hand. I didn't bother to tell him that I already was.

**A/N: This is short... but I knew that this was going to be. Now we only have the epilogue, which I think is going to be pretty long, but I'm not sure yet! I haven't written any of it. I hope that you guys liked this chapter as much as I did (THEY GOT BACK TOGETHER HECK YES ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD) and, um, yeah, we're only one chapter from being done guys! **


	22. Epilogue

**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone seen here. Not even the Melvin/Bobby idea. That belongs to acosta perez jose ramiro, I just borrowed it! (Also, did you know that you have a very long Pen Name APJR?)**

**Dedication: I was going to dedicate this story to just one person... BUT there have been so many reviewers and supports that put up with the epic waits between chapters and have put up with Raven's stupidity at times that I can't give it to just one person. So, this is dedicated to everyone that read and liked it, everyone that reviewed, and everyone that liked seeing Raven change from a scared girl that didn't put herself on the line because she was afraid, to someone that knows who she is and that being afraid isn't a way to live life- at all. So yeah. I love you all! *massive group hug***

_Philophobia_

_Epilogue_

_One Year Later_

It's nice being back home. I haven't been back to Jump City since Christmas, and I've missed this place. It's where I grew up, of course I'm going to miss it.

Plus I have people that bring me back to this place. Like Mom, Kevin, and Melvin. My family, no matter how mismatched we may be. Melvin's turning one today and I couldn't miss the party. Mom would kill me.

And Gar. I haven't seen him in over two months and sometimes it physically hurts to think of him. But I'd see him today, Melvin absolutely adored him ever since he gave her her favorite toy, a big Teddy bear named Bobby. He gave it to her three days after she was born. Let's just say she's been a fan from the very beginning.

I cross the oh so famous bridge, the one that we did _not _steal from San Francisco, thank you very much, and turn up the radio. I'm home, I'm going to see Gar and my little sister. Life is good.

..O..

When I arrive at the apartment complex I grab my package, one that is covered with so much wrapping paper that I think that I took down a whole forest because I'm complete and utter crap when it comes to wrapping gifts, and get attacked from behind. His hands are over my eyes and I try to pretend like I'm not smiling.

"I hope I'm not getting mugged," I manage to say, and Gar laughs. He turns me around and then lays one on me. I stand on my tip toes to get closer to him; I haven't seen him for so long that I've almost forgotten what he tastes like.

I remember now. It's spearmint gum, and sweat covered up by cologne, and something that only he has, the one thing that makes him more special to me than anyone else.

I pull away and when he pouts it's my turn to laugh. I slip my arm through his and say, "Remember, child friendly."

"Melvin's been talking about seeing you all morning. Arella's been telling her things about you so that she'll remember."

"She'd better remember, I spent forty bucks on her stupid present."

"Oh you know you loved coming to me for advice and then buying it for her." I rolled my eyes, partly because it's true- the part about me having to go for him for advice because I had no idea what to get a one year old- and partly because I can.

"Yep..." I'm about to say something else when I'm interrupted by shrieks of "_Rae Rae!" _or something close to it.

"Mel Mel!" I reply, and catch my baby sister before she falls. According to my mother as soon as she figured out that she could walk she also figured out that she could run, and because of this she falls all the time.

I pick her up- she's light and short, like me- and hug her tightly before she starts to wiggle out of my arms and starts speaking in baby talk as I gently set her down. Mom says that she won't talk until she's eighteen months or so, but if I listen hard enough I can figure out what she's saying.

I run a hand through her fine blonde hair, so unlike my own that you wouldn't even know that we were sisters. Gar's convinced that we look alike, but I know that he's nuts. Always has been. Always will be. There's no other way that I'd want for him to be.

Gar kisses my cheek suddenly, and I turn to look at him. "What was that for?"

"I plead the fifth."

"I think that you've been enjoying those law classes of yours a little too much."

Gar snorted as we walked through the kitchen. "Please. I don't want to go to law school, way too much work."

"You're lazy."

"Nah, just uninspired when it comes to that sort of thing. If I was going to work in civil justice I'd be a super hero."

"The kind with spandex and their underwear on the outside, right?"

Before Gar could respond to my clever retort my mother burst in. "Oh Raven," she said dramatically, like always. "It's so nice to see you dear." I let go of Gar's hand to give my mother a hug.

"Likewise, mom."

"You're just saying that because I pay your tuition over at that big shot school that you go to now."

"That's only part of it, Mom. Where's Kevin?"

"The poor dear's at the grill. He can't figure out how to light it, and Gar's offered to help him a thousand times, but you know men. They won't ever ask for help, too stubborn." My mother sent an apologetic smile Gar's way. "No offense, Gar."

"No, it's okay. You should see Steve. He won't go to the doctor until he's practically on his deathbed. Rita gets so upset at him that it's not even funny anymore."

"And what about you?" I ask. "What sort of stubbornness that you have so that I'll know about it now instead of having to learn it in the long run?"

Gar lights up, the way that he always does whenever I refer to the fact that we're going to last for longer than this next week. Because we are, I know it. "That is something that you're going to have to discover for yourself, won't you?"

"Unfortunately for me, yes, I guess so."

Gar put his arm around me and I put my head on his shoulder, just marveling at the fact that I could love someone so completely, and that he could love me back.

Life had many twists and turns and I didn't know the future. I couldn't decide everything, I couldn't _know _everything, but there were some things that I did know.

One: I had an amazing family and I was lucky. Melvin, my little sister that I loved dearly, would never have the childhood that I had. Mom would always be there to pack her lunch and do her hair; I was absolutely positive about that.

Two: I was going Someplace. I was going to become a social worker, trying to get kids out of bad situations. I might not get paid much, but I knew that I wanted to help people and I was going to do just that.

and

Three: I loved Gar and Gar loved me and I was able to give myself to him in more ways than one. Maybe in five years we'd have two point five kids and a blue house with a white picket fence, or maybe not.

But either way I was going to let myself find out.

**A/N: Annnd... it's done. I cannot believe it. Really, I can't. I have worked on this story for SO DANG LONG! And was this fluffy enough for you? I'm actually kind of... sad. I just... gah. I can't believe this is officially OVER. These characters have been pretty much a part of me for forever... and now I have to let them go and live their own lives inside my head. LOL. **

**Also, some self pimping over here, anyone want to go read my Wonder Girl/Speedy fic, **_**And That's How It Happened**_**? I appreciated it if you did, and if you'd review it... Also, I have another multi-chaptered fic **_**Jar of Hearts **_**which I adore. And I'll be having some new Raven/Beast Boy fics out soon. Scout's honor. :P**

**Oh God. This is really over. **

**Yeah, I'm done.**

**-RFE**


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